


How To Embrace A Swamp Creature

by littleblackfox



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Awful things happen to Brock Rumlow, Bad Coffee, Consentacles, Enthusiastic Consentacles, Even Tentacle Monsters Have A First Time, First Time, Fluff, I tried to write horror and wrote fluff, M/M, Modern AU, Mutual Pining, Smut, Steve Rogers Get Your Shit Together, Tentacle Monster Bucky, Tentacle Monster Bucky Just Needs A Hug, cabin in the woods, past abusive relationship, yup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-25 04:53:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12523428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleblackfox/pseuds/littleblackfox
Summary: Steve washes his hands with the sliver of soap left by the sink, and takes a long hard look at himself in the mirror.The cut on his brow has scabbed over, and the bruises around his eye are blotchy red and sore to the touch.Stupid.His hands are no better, and he grips the edge of the sink to keep them from shaking. The scabs on his knuckles open up again, blood welling up starkly against his bone white fists. He holds them under the running faucet and watches the water circle the drain before pulling himself together.Just a little bit further, a little bit longer





	1. Saranac Lake

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Scary Bang 2017 (prompt in the end notes)
> 
> Many thanks to Annina and Trish for talking me into this. A highly persuasive pair of perverts, I love them both  
> Thanks to Eidheann and Buhfly for beta reading and yelling at Steve 'no self-preservation' Rogers as he does dumb shit
> 
> You can find me on [Tumblr](http://thelittleblackfox.tumblr.com) where I mostly post pictures of Sebastian Stan's insufferably pretty face and complain about Historical au's

It’s a six hour drive from New York City to Saranac Lake. It would be quicker by car, probably safer too, but Steve crosses the Hudson a few hours past midnight on his beat up old Harley and heads north.  
He stops when he has to, pulling into gas stations along the I-87 to refuel and gulp down a cup of scalding, acrid vending machine coffee before taking to the road again.  
The station attendants don’t comment on the bruises, the swelling around his eye or the cut on his brow that's still bleeding sluggishly, the wound opening up every time he takes off his crash helmet. They stare at his shaking hands as he pulls off his gloves and hands over money, the knuckles skinned and red-raw. He pays in cash only, anonymous and untraceable, and keeps his head down. There are cameras everywhere, and maybe it’s paranoia, maybe the bastard's reach doesn’t extend as far as he claims, but Steve isn’t taking any chances. He pays in crumbled bills, hoarded over months for this moment, and keeps moving north.

The Adirondack mountains stand at the northernmost point of New York state, west of Vermont and more or less a stone's throw from Canada.   
Steve keeps his eyes on the road ahead, barely seeing the changing landscape as the miles fall away beneath his wheels. It’s only when he pulls onto the I-9 that he looks up and sees the trees. They cluster right up to the road, stretching out to the horizon in every direction, the Interstate cutting a swath through the expanse of green tinged with gold. The air is colder up here, and he can feel summer's end in a way that is far more visceral than the changing leaves in Prospect Park.  
He follows the signs for Lake Placid, driving along quiet single lanes up into the foothills, and takes a detour to a lonely little gas station in a sheltered valley. Despite the early hour the place is already open.  
If the landscape isn't enough of a clue that he really was out of New York, the gas station attendant is.  
He is old and bad tempered, his features craggy and rumpled, the name Phillips neatly embroidered on his shirt. He comes out of the little convenience store as Steve climbs off the bike and shakes his head, tutting loudly.  
“Give me that,” he snaps as Steve tries to unhook the nozzle from the gas pump. “There’s a trick to it.”  
He shoves Steve out of the way, no mean feat considering how tall and broad Steve is.   
Not that it's stopped certain people from pushing him around.  
Steve takes a step back, his gloved hands raised in surrender, and lets the man pump gas.  
“It’s the power to displacement ratio that’s the real problem on these things,” Phillips announces, looking over Steve’s bike with a critical eye. “1200cc engine and you got what? Sixty horsepower? Damn things, you spent how much? Fifteen grand so you can pretend you’re James Dean?”  
Steve pulls off his helmet and scratches the itch on his scalp that’s been bugging him for the last thirty miles.  
“Damn, son.” Phillips mutters, taking a good look at him. “You need a band-aid or something?”  
Steve pulls off his glove with his teeth and stuffs it into the helmet. “You got aspirin?”  
Phillips lets out a soft _pfft_ of air between his teeth and finishes up, leading Steve into the store.  
“You on the run, boy?” he asks over his shoulder  
Yes  
“No.”  
“Hmm.” Phillips sounds unconvinced as he goes around the counter and punches the price of gas into the old cash machine. “What you doing upstate?”  
Steve unzips his leather jacket and tugs at his t-shirt. He aches, sweat pooling under his bike leathers and making his clothes stick to his skin. The tightness in his chest has eased a little, and he takes what feels like the first deep breath in months.  
“Moving,” he says as Phillips looks at him expectantly. “Bought a place up near Saranac Lake.”  
Phillips pulls a battered little first aid kit out from under the counter and pushes it towards Steve.  
“Bathroom out back,” he says gruffly. “You might wanna sort yourself out before showing up at Saranac and giving those good people a scare.”  
Steve huffs, but takes the kit with a muttered thanks.  
“Whereabout you staying?” Phillips asks curiously. “Didn’t think there was anything on the market, not since the Jones’ house sold.”  
Steve turns the kit around in his hands slowly. “I think the last owners were called Barnes, out by some place called-”  
“Round pond,” Phillips’ expression darkens. “Yeah. I know all about that place.”  
Steve holds up the kit. “I’m…E I’m gonna go clean up then.”

He finds the facilities easily, tucked around the back of the store. A single cubicle and a sink with a mirror above it, the edges silvering.   
Steve uses the toilet before washing his hands with the sliver of soap left by the sink, and takes a long hard look at himself in the mirror.  
The cut on his brow has scabbed over, and the bruises around his eye are blotchy red and sore to the touch.  
 _Stupid._  
His hands are no better, and he grips the edge of the sink to keep them from shaking. The scabs on his knuckles open up again, blood welling up starkly against his bone white fists. He holds them under the running faucet and watches the water circle the drain before pulling himself together.   
Just a little bit further, a little bit longer, and he can stop.  
He unsnaps the fastenings on the first aid kit and opens it up. Bandages, bandaids, safety pins and packs of antiseptic wipes all jumbled up together. He tears open a packet of wipes with his teeth and dabs at his hands. He’s vaguely aware of the sting of alcohol against raw skin, but the sensation feels faint, far removed, as if happening on the other side of the mirror. Another pack of wipes is used to clean his face. The cut above his eye is jagged _blunt force trauma_ but clean, and he’s reluctant to mess with it if he doesn’t have to. The rest of it the people of Saranac will just have to get used to.  
He balls up the wipes and wrappers and drops them into a trashcan under the sink, blotches of scarlet soaking into the thin cloth and fading to pink.   
He doesn’t look in the mirror again as he snaps the kit shut, and goes back out front to pay.

Phillips looks up as Steve opens the door, knocking into the little brass bell above it and flinching when it jangles.  
“Thank you.” Steve places the kit on the counter, next to where he left his crash helmet and gloves. “What do I owe you?”  
Phillips watches Steve reach into the back pocket of his jeans and pull out his wallet. “What’s your name, son?”  
Steve hesitates. “Rogers,” he says slowly. “Steve Rogers.”  
Phillips points to the total on the register, and Steve carefully counts out his money, putting away his wallet and zipping up his jacket.  
“Well, Steve Rogers,” Phillips counts the money into the register and knocks the drawer shut. “Why don’t you do yourself a favour and get on that overpriced thing you call a bike, and go back the way you came.”  
Steve stares at the man for a moment before reaching out and grabbing his helmet. Phillips doesn’t look threatening, there’s nothing aggressive about the way he leans on the counter.  
“You got a problem with me, sir?” Steve asks through gritted teeth.  
“No, son.” Phillips’ tone is gentle, unexpectedly so. “But there’s nothing but trouble waiting up there.”  
Steve purses his lips, and pulls his gloves out of crash helmet, pulling them on one at a time. Whatever is ahead of him can’t be any worse than what’s behind him, and he’ll say nothing more on the matter.  
“I guess I’ll take my chances,” he says with a shrug, and pulls on his helmet.  
He gives Phillips a nod before walking out to the forecourt and climbing onto his bike. He guns the engine, pulls out onto the deserted road, and heads west into the mountains.

It’s another half hour through the forests to reach the town of Lake Placid. With the summer vacations over the village is quiet, but Steve doesn’t linger. He adjusts his gloves and keeps riding east.  
The road skirts around the Adirondack High Peaks, the solitary crest of Whiteface Mountain on his left, where it stays until he reaches the town of Saranac Lake.  
Despite its name the town is some miles East of the Saranacs. It is a beautiful town, if badly named, wide streets and tall, red-painted buildings clustered around the northern edge of Flower Lake. With so many lakes and rivers running around, Steve figures that it’s easy to get them mixed up.  
He stops at a convenience store on the edge of town and is hit by the painful realisation that, for all his planning, he is completely unprepared. Panic rises in his chest, and he forces it down.   
Just a little bit further, just a little longer.   
He bites down on the inside of his cheek, the pain sharp enough to make the ache around his eye flare up again. He grits his teeth and takes off his crash helmet, hooking it onto the handlebar and heading into the store.   
Inside it’s clean and brightly lit, and Steve walks up and down the aisle, trying to focus on one thing at a time. Toothbrush. Toothpaste. Comb. Soap. Nothing is simple. Does he need a white toothbrush or a blue one? Stiff bristles or ones that change colour when the toothbrush has worn out? Does he want toothpaste that whitens his teeth or freshens his breath? Castile soap or glycerin?  
Steve sucks in a breath and counts to five. What does it matter? What does any of it matter?  
White toothbrush. Mint toothpaste. Glycerin soap. Comb. Box of matches.  
What else does he need to start over?  
A burner phone to replace the one at the bottom of the Hudson, something that can’t be traced back to him. Something to charge it with, since the cabin is off the grid. Aspirin.  
He finds a solar charger takes his items to the counter and dumps them in front of the teenager hunched over a textbook. The kid starts ringing up the items, and glances up at Steve.  
“Woah,” he whispers, and the toothpaste in his hand drops to the floor with a clatter. “Sorry,” he says breathlessly and scrambles to rescue it from the clutter around his feet.  
“It’s fine,” Steve says weakly, but doubts the kid can hear him.  
The kid reappears, waving the slightly battered tube of toothpaste triumphantly. “I got it! It’s fine, it’s fine.”  
Steve nods patiently, and reaches for his wallet. Shit, was he ever that young? Or was he born thirty and carrying the weight of the world?  
“Can you tell me how to get to Adirondack Real Estate?” He asks.  
“You here on vacation?” the kid asks, scanning the rest of his items. “Pretty late in the season, y’know?”  
“Getting a place up here,” Steve pulls a note from his wallet. It’s starting to look a little empty, but he has a little more packed up on his bike with the things he remembered to grab on his way out the door, plus the savings that Nat is holding on to.   
The kid brightens up, shoving Steve’s items into a bag. “Yeah? Where you moving to? Franklin?”  
“The Barnes place?”  
Steve hands over his money, and the kid stares at him for a minute.  
“Barnes? Out by Round Pond?”  
“That’s the one,” Steve waves the money under the kid's nose until he takes it.   
The boy deflates a little, taking Steve’s money and punching the amount into the till.  
“Uh. Directions?” Steve reminds him.  
“Yeah,” the cash drawer slides open and the kid slips in the notes and counts out change. “Keep on Main Street a couple of miles, it’s on your right.”  
“Thanks.”  
The kid shifts the change around in his hands nervously. “You know that place is haunted, right? Last people there took off in the middle of the night. Said something was climbing up onto the roof, trying to get in.”  
Steve snatches the change out of the kids hand and shoves it into his pocket. “I guess that’s why it was so cheap.”  
He picks up the bag and gives the kid a nod before heading outside, packing his items into the pannier on the back of his bike, tucking it under his sketchbook and pens.  
All the stuff he left behind, all his clothes and books and… everything. How the fuck is he planning on surviving the winter with a single change of clothes and a box of matches?

Adirondack Real Estate is easy enough to find, a little ways north of the lake. Steve parks and removes his crash helmet and gloves, leaving them on the seat while he brushes his hands through his hair and tries to look slightly presentable. He glances at his reflection in the wing mirror and stops trying. His right eye is red and puffy, pushing his eye shut. His hands don’t looks much better.  
He lets out a sigh, and hopes for the best. The guy had sounded delighted about making the sale on the phone, and had been happy enough to broker a deal in the middle of the night with a stranger.  
Steve tries the door, finding it unlocked, and peers around inside.  
There is a waiting area with a handful of comfortable chairs and a box of children's toys in the corner, separated from the rest of the room by a flimsy freestanding divider. Past that, Steve can see two office desks cluttered with paper and a flustered looking man with a shock of curling dark hair jabbing at a printer in the far corner.  
“Mr Lang?” Steve calls out.  
The man turns on his heel, clutching a handful of papers, and gives Steve a bright smile. “Mr Rogers?”  
His expression doesn’t even flicker when Steve approaches, and he can’t help but like the guy for that.  
“Call me Scott,” he holds out the hand not full of papers. “Are you early or am I late?”   
“I’m early,” Steve assures him, shaking his hand. “Steve.”  
“Good to meet you, Steve,” Scott takes his papers over to his desk, checking they’re in order before stapling them together and stuffing them into a folder. “You bring your ID?”  
Steve pats the inside pocket of his leather jacket. “I did.”  
“Great!” Scott goes back to the printer as it spits out another handful of papers. “I had a quick conversation with the sellers this morning, they’re really happy to proceed.”  
“Great,” Steve claps his hands together. “Where do I sign?”  
“Hold on, now.” Scott holds up his hands, papers trailing. “Let’s not rush into things.”  
Steve puts his hands on his hips and takes a breath, knowing well enough that kicking up a fuss won’t get him anywhere. “But I’m here now,” he says flatly.  
“It’s gonna take the bank a few hours to send the payment through,” Scott explains. “So how about we go down to the lake, take a look at the property? Get a feel for the place, you know?”  
“I know about the stories,” Steve says. “And I don’t believe in ghosts.”  
Scott looks uncomfortable, but perseveres. “Look at it this way, we’ve got a couple of hours before we can sign anything, and it would really make me feel better. What do you say?” Scott holds his arms out. “I’ll even buy you lunch! There’s a great place here, I know the guy who runs it. Makes the best burritos.”  
Steve shakes his head. “Sure,” he says with a smile. “Sounds great.”  
Scott looks so relieved that Steve feels slightly guilty for being stubborn, fidgeting quietly while Scott hunts for the keys to the property.  
“Great!” Scott tosses the keys in the air and catches them. “Come on, I’ll drive.”

Scott’s car has seen better days, but runs well enough. There is a photo of a woman and a little girl aged around seven tucked into the sun visor, and Steve looks at it curiously. “Your…?”  
“My wife, Maggie,” Scott says proudly. “That’s our little girl Cassie. My little peanut.”  
Steve can’t help but smile at the way Scott says her nickname. “You have a beautiful family.”  
Scott beams with pride, his eyes on the road as they head west.  
Steve looks out of the window, memorising the route as they go. It’s not exactly a challenge, a single road snaking through the innumerable lakes.  
“Hell of a sight, isn’t it?” Scott waves out the window as they pass another tree lined lake, dotted with irregular shaped little islands of of dense green vegetation. “When I was a kid a pond was a little round pool in the park. Out here they’re huge.”  
Steve nods in agreement. “This place is more water than land,” he agrees. Outside his window there is a thin line of trees either side of the road and great expanses of water beyond. “I gotta say, when I read the listing and it said ‘Round Pond’, I was thinking more like swimming pool size?”  
Scott chuckles. “Upper Saranac over on the left is maybe twelve miles long? But the shore length is more like forty. It kinda meanders.” Scott weaves his hand back and forth to demonstrate. “Round Pond is maybe a mile across?”  
“That big, huh?” Steve murmurs, impressed.  
“Well,” Scott shrugs. “When you compare it with all this.”  
“Point,” Steve huffs.  
“You know Round Pond isn’t actually called Round Pond?” They reach a junction and Scott takes the road south, driving deeper into the lakes until Steve is half convinced that the land will disappear altogether. “It’s not called anything. Whole bunch of hidden lakes and pools around here, no one ever got around to calling them anything.”  
“Any problems with flooding?” he asks nervously.  
“Nah,” Scott reassures him. “Gets cold though, down to about 34 this time of year, low as 5 around Christmas. We get a couple of feet of snow at Christmas, so you wanna watch your supplies in case you get snowed in. Been known to get down to -30.”  
“Fuck,” Steve breathes.  
Scott nods emphatically. “Don’t trust the weather, it can’t make up its mind. One minute it’s raining, the next the sun’s shining.”  
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Steve promises.  
There is a cleared area by the side of the road opposite a boat launch into one of the lakes, and Scott pulls over. He turns off the engine and gives Steve a nervous smile.   
“This it?” Steve asks, looking around for any sign of a cabin.  
“Oh? No,” Scott shakes his head. “Still a ways yet. Hope you don’t mind walking.”

Scott climbs out of the car, patting his pocket to make sure he still has the keys, and points across the road as Steve gets out and turns in a small circle, taking in his surroundings.  
“There’s a trail opposite,” he points to a gap in the tree line across the road. “It’s nNot more than a mile and it’s easy terrain, open hardwood forest.”  
Steve nods and follows Scott over to the path. At some point in the past it must have been wide enough to get a vehicle down, but the trees either side have gradually reclaimed the land. The ground is soft with years of undisturbed leaf litter, bark and branches snapping underfoot. Late morning sunlight filters through the canopy of evergreen leaves.  
“Any neighbours?” Steve asks as Scott steps over a fallen tree trunk. It’s as thick as a man’s torso, but Steve is fairly confident he could move it off the path with a little time and some rope.  
“There’s a couple of beachfront places over on the Upper Saranac, about ten, fifteen miles that way.” he points back the way they came from. “Keep heading south and you’ll eventually get to a couple of campsites. You’re not likely to see many folks in high season around here.”  
The trail curves a little, and opens up into a clearing overlooking Round Pond. Scott sits down on a fallen pine and gestures vaguely to the waters below while he catches his breath, and Steve takes in the view.  
The air is sharp and crisp, scented with resinous leaves and rich earth, and Steve breathes in deep.   
The waters below shimmer in the sunlight, the surface smooth but for the occasional eddy.  
“Any fish?” Steve asks. He’s never tried fishing, but figures it can’t be that hard.  
Scott nods. “Good for trout, maybe bass and perch? Ice fishing runs from mid-November to end of April.”  
“This thing will be frozen?” Steve asks, and from the way Scott laughs he know’s he’s asked a dumb question. “Right. -30.”  
Scott pulls himself together and stands up, brushing sawdust off the seat of his pants. “Come on.”

They follow the curve of the lake, the path leading down to the water's edge, and the cabin.  
The trees have been cut down around the path leading up to the cabin, so it sits in a clearing. There had once been a garden of some kind, but now the flowerbeds were choked with weeds and the grass has gone to seed.  
It’s smaller than Steve had expected from the outside, a small, square building with a small porch out front overlooking the lake. By the shore there is a deck, the wooden boards jutting out over the water worn but still in good condition, and a small stretch of private beach sloping down into the still, dark water.  
The scrubby grass stretching from the shoreline to the cabin is torn up and ragged, with deep gouges in the damp earth.   
Scott kicks at a tuft of grass. “There’s a boathouse round the side. Pretty sure there’s a boat in there too. Nothing fancy, just a little rowboat.” Scott ducks his head apologetically. “The last people left in a hurry, and don’t plan on coming back, so help yourself to furniture and whatnot.”  
Steve walks down to the water’s edge and stares out over the lake. He could swear that it stares right back at him.  
Scott shivers and pulls the keys out of his pocket. “Let’s go inside?”  
He climbs up the steps onto the deck and waits for Steve to join him before he begins.  
“Okay, so it’s all on one floor. You got a living space with a kitchenette, plus bathroom and bedroom.” He unlocks the door and pushes it open. “There’s a woodburning stove for heat, so make sure you’ve got plenty of fuel stored for winter and-” Scott steps into the living room. “Holy shit!”  
Steve turns away from the view of the lake and follows him into the cabin. “What’s…”  
He falls silent at the scene before him.

The previous owners of the property had left in the middle of the night with a few bags of their most valued possessions, leaving everything else behind. The pictures Steve had seen on the Real Estate website had shown the inside of the cabin, stained pinewood walls and a selection of simple, homely furniture included in the price. Everything, every dish and plate, every piece of furniture, has been destroyed.  
The couch had been overturned, the coffee table smashed, splinters of pine scattered across the floor. The boxy old TV that had been on an occasional table in the corner has been… crushed. Like something had wrapped around it and squeezed. The breakfast bar that separated the kitchen and dining room is in fragments.  
Scott picks his way through the debris, swearing to himself, and checks the state of the bathroom. Steve follows, looking over his shoulder, and sees the suite is still intact. A bath, toilet and sink, all unharmed amid the devastation, though there are streaks of mud across the walls, and several inches of murky looking water in the bath. Steve goes over to the kitchen while Scott circles the lounge, picking up pieces of furniture and looking despondent.  
The oven seems to be working, and there are a couple of cabinets still standing, the ones that had been attached to the wall torn off, leaving screws and fragments of chipboard standing out sharply from the pine slats. The tall barstools that were arranged around the breakfast bar in the photos are lying on the floor, their hollow metal legs twisted up like paperclips.  
“It must have been kids or something,” Scott says weakly.  
Steve hums thoughtfully, walking over to a door on the far side of the room. He turns the handle, pushes it open, and finds the bedroom.  
Whatever had wreaked havoc in the rest of the cabin had not forgotten this room either. The mattress has been dragged from the bed and eviscerated, padding and metal springs trailing across the floor. The bedside table and wardrobe have been crushed. The bedframe, a sturdy double made with thick lengths of pine, has been snapped in two across the center. It sags in the center of the room like a broken bridge.  
Steve looks up at the ceiling, and can see daylight from where the flat roof has been prised up.  
“Huh,” Steve says to himself. “That kid at the store was right.”

Steve finds Scott on the front porch, desperately trying to get a signal on his phone.  
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I’ve not been out here since the spring with the photographer,” Scott babbles. “I’ll take care of it, just as soon as I can…” He holds his phone up over his head, but can get nothing more than a single bar.  
The front door is wide open, and Steve runs his fingers down the door frame. There’s no sign of forced entry, and the door had been locked when they arrived, he’d watched Scott struggle with the keys not moments ago.  
Steve looks out over the lake, the water still and dark.  
He should get out. Go back into town with Scott, apologise for taking up his time and get the fuck out of the Adirondack mountains.  
But where would he go?   
Steve looks down at his hands, at the bruises on his knuckles, and sets his jaw.  
“Can you give me a hand moving stuff outside?” he asks Scott.   
Scott lets out a high pitched yelp. “You’re staying?”  
“Yeah.” Steve nods firmly. “Can you give me a hand?  
Scott gapes at him, and Steve shakes his head and goes back inside.   
He finds a cardboard box, flattened and tossed into a corner but still intact, and starts filling it with pieces of crockery and broken glass.  
After several minutes he hears the door creak open, and Scott's careful footsteps.  
“You’re serious,” Scott sounds slightly awed. “You still want the house.”  
Steve nods, sealing up the box and looking for something else to use. “Is there a dump in town I can take this?”  
Scott nods, and finally comes to his senses. “Yeah, no problem. I can take it. You want this replacing? We can do that.”  
“It’s fine.” Steve shakes out a refuse sack and starts filling it. “Wouldn’t say no to a new mattress.”  
“Anything,” Scott nods frantically. “Anything you want.”

They work quietly, taking anything that can be burned out to the front yard and piling them up by the cabin for Steve to sort through later.   
Scott manages to find a broom hidden away in a closet with a few other items that were left untouched, and sweeps the floor while Steve wrestles with the couch. He tips it onto its side, and finds that it’s still in one piece, it’s sage green cover streaked with mud.   
“Give me a hand with this?” he asks.  
Scott props the broom up against the wall and together they manage to flip the couch the right way up. After a brief discussion they decide on where to put it, facing a wood burning stove that is a little dented but still in one piece.  
Steve tries not to wonder what could put a sizeable dent in the top of a piece of cast iron. Or break a bed in two.  
Scott checks his watch and claps his hands together. “Okay, so how about that lunch?”  
Steve checks over the room one more time. He’s tired and sore, and hasn’t slept in over twenty four hours. In all honesty the thought of food makes his stomach turn.  
“My buddy makes the best burritos in town,” Scott coaxes. “Okay, so he makes the only burritos in town, but still…”  
“That sounds great,” Steve assures him.   
“Fantastic.” Scott bounces on the balls of his feet. “I’m really glad you’re taking the place but can we please go because it creeps the hell out of me.”  
Steve lets out a soft breath, the closest thing to a laugh he’s uttered in months. “Sure.”

They carry the boxes of trash out to the porch, and Scott locks the front door, more out of habit than anything. He looks down at the keys in his hand and turns to Steve.  
“Catch,” he says, tossing them over.  
Steve snatches them out of the air, and feels the weight of them in his hand. There is something comforting about them, though Steve couldn’t say what. He shoves the keys in his pocket, where they press against his hip, unfamiliar and reassuring.  
They carry the trash back up the trail, Steve carrying the heavier boxes while Scott carries the trash bags full of mattress, one under his arm and the other dragged along the path behind him, snagging on twigs and low hanging branches.  
They reach the car and manage to stuff most of it in the back, Scott insisting the whole while that he can take care of everything, and Steve is too worn out to do anything but nod silently.  
Steve looks across the road at the path leading back to the cabin, and feels the keys jabbing into his thigh, the metal warmed by his body heat.  
Scott closes the trunk and leans on it until he hears it click, and clears his throat.  
“You can still change your mind,” he says carefully. “You don’t have to go ahead with the sale.”  
Steve smiles to himself, something delicate and strange unfurling in his chest.  
“It’s good,” he says under his breath.  
“What?” Scott asks.  
“Nothing.” Steve shakes his head. He needs to find a hardware store, somewhere he can get a decent saw, and a hammer and nails to fix the roof. And he needs to call Nat, tell her where he is.  
Scott climbs into the car and drums his hands on the steering wheel, and Steve takes one more look at the tall pines before getting into the car with him. Scott turns the engine, flicking on the radio as he pulls onto the road.

Something moves through the trees, the branches shaking, spilling yellowing leaves as it follows the line of the road until the car is out of sight.


	2. Asilvestrado

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve listens to the sound of ragged breathing and realises that it is not his own.  
> He’s awake. He’s awake and there is something moving in the crawl space under the cabin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 folks. Here be spooky business.  
> Asilvestrado - Feral
> 
> Many thanks to Eidheann for coming to the rescue with beta reading, and the Buttaneers for enthusiasm  
> Special thanks to Krycek-Asks for reading and sending me pictures of maple trees. Lots of pictures of maple trees  
> You can find me on [Tumblr](http://thelittleblackfox.tumblr.com)

Steve spends his first night in the cabin crushed up on the couch, his feet hanging over the armrest.   
Despite the mild weather, the cabin is freezing, and he burrows into the couch cushions wearing everything he owns but his biking boots, trying to keep warm.  
He dozes fitfully, too agitated to fall into a deep sleep, too exhausted to try and make himself more comfortable.   
When he sleeps, he dreams. He dreams of riding along endless dark roads lined with tall trees, bright eyed shapes moving between the branches. He dreams of still water, black in the moonlight, the surface mirror-flat, though there is movement in the depths, a flash of something pale among the reeds.  
There is something moving in the crawl space underneath the cabin.  
It is slow and heavy, the thump and susurration of a dead weight being dragged through the dirt.  
Steve listens to the sound of ragged breathing and realises that it is not his own.   
He’s awake. He’s awake and there is something moving in the crawl space under the cabin.   
His lungs lock, the huff of breath that had been gathering in the roof of his mouth tries to push back down his throat.  
It is some hours before dawn, the light of a waning moon filtering through the mud-streaked windows and painting the cabin in shades of black and grey. Something scrapes across the underside of the floorboards under the couch, sharp nails dragging along the hardwood. Steve presses his face to the couch cushion, trying to muffle any sound that might slip out of his mouth, and keeps still, tracking the sound as it moves across the floor.  
It stops halfway to the kitchen, and for a long time he hears nothing.  
 _A dream_ , Steve thinks to himself. _A weird, fucked up dream_.  
A heavy weight slams up against the floor, and the boards creak, straining against the pressure. The thing punches up again, targeting a loosened board, and in the weak moonlight Steve can see the strip of pine slowly being lifted.

“No!” Steve yells, his heart hammering in his throat.  
He scrambles off the couch, his socked feet slipping on the floorboards, and stumbles over to the kitchen.  
It’s too dark to see clearly, and he slams into the wall, still unused to moving about in the small space.   
On the kitchen counter are the supplies he picked up in town, and he fumbles blindly through them, knocking over the jar of instant coffee and sending the saw to the floor with a loud clatter.  
Under the floor the _thing_ starts moving, shifting back and forth beneath Steve’s feet. He stamps his foot and swears, his hand closing around the smooth wooden handle of a claw hammer.  
“Fuck off!” Steve yells and drops to to the floor. He gives the board a firm whack with the hammer before scrambling on his hands and knees to where the loose floorboard is jutting out, the exposed nails on its underside like sharp little teeth.  
Steve pushes it down, slotting it into place between the other boards and hammers each nail back into place, his ears filled with the thundering of his own blood, his heart pounding staccato-fast.  
Steve sets down the hammer on the boards, splintered and pock-marked, and sinks to the floor. Under his heavy leather jacket, his clothes are soaked in sweat. His throat feels raw and harsh, his lungs aching. His hands won’t stop shaking, and he clenches them into fists and presses them to the boards, and tries to make himself still.  
 _Make me into stone. Please make me a stone_.  
He presses his cheek to the floor, the wooden slats cool against his feverish skin, and listens to the silence.

Steve spends the hours before dawn sat on the cabin floor, the hammer at his side, and waits for the sun to rise.  
He strips off his layers of clothing, jacket and t-shirts and socks, down to nothing but his faded jeans, and leaves them draped over the couch as he walks over to the door. The keys are still where he left them, slotted into in the lock, and he turns them, hearing the click of tumblers as the mechanism opens up, and goes outside.  
The lake is silent and still, faint threads of fog hanging over the surface, and the trees hang low overhead. The forest is silent, and the whole world seems to be holding its breath.  
“Fuck,” Steve says softly, and starts collecting up stones to make a firepit.

It takes most of the morning to build the pit, a hollowed out depression in the dirt a yard or so across. It’s close enough to the deck overhanging the water for him to sit and warm his back while he watches the lake, and a safe distance from the cabin. The last thing he needs is to burn the place down.  
He gets to work burning the debris brought out the day before, and doesn’t pay attention to how the pile has been disturbed in the night, the neatly stacked wood scattered across the grounds.   
He doesn’t travel far, keeping an eye on the fire as he picks up the pieces of furniture strewn across the clearing. There is a boat shed a little ways along the beach, hidden behind a cluster of beech saplings and ferns.   
Steve doesn’t push his way through the vegetation to reach the door, and turns back to the fire with his armful of wood.  
He finds a cast iron kettle in the kitchen, and rinses it out a few times before filling it with water and taking it out to the fire. He prods at the coals with a long piece of wood, tapping it against the grass when the splintered edge catches light, and balances the kettle in the ashes. He pokes at it a few times, making sure that it’s not going to topple over, and goes back inside.   
There are a couple of things in the kitchen that survived… whatever happened. Mugs, plates, bowls. In a drawer there’s a few pieces of cutlery, and Steve picks out a teaspoon, wiping the bowl of it with his thumb. He spoons coffee into a mug and takes it outside, putting it by the firepit for when the water finally boils, and goes back to gathering debris.  
Breakfast is black coffee and a bowl of instant oats, eaten while sat on the deck overlooking the lake.  
Steve scrapes his spoon across the bottom of the bowl, chasing the last scraps of tough, chewy porridge, and watches a pair of dragonflies hovering over the waters, darting back and forth.  
He finishes his coffee, and gets back to work. 

Steve is kneeling on the roof, claw hammer in his hand and a couple of nails held fast between his teeth when he hears a rustling sound coming from the trail. He tightens his grip on the hammer and listens carefully.  
The _thing_ , whatever it was, hasn’t been back since that first night, though in the mornings when he comes outside things have been tampered with. The folding chair that he found in the shed behind the cabin and put up on the deck ended up on the far side of the lake, and every morning his first job of the day is putting the firepit back together. The rocks aren’t moved that far, and are usually left in sight of the house.  
Every morning he sweeps the streaks of ash that lead up the steps to the porch too.  
The rustling gets louder, and there is a loud thump. Steve spits out the nails and moves into a crouch.  
There is a vehement curse, and a shout of laughter. The tension slowly eases in Steve’s shoulders, and he lowers the hammer.  
He pulls the bag of nails out of his pocket, takes out a couple and clamps them between his teeth. He slips the bag back into his back pocket and checks that the wooden slat is slotted into position before hammering the nails into place. He moves along the flat roof, positioning each wooden slat and nailing them down, adding a few extra to the final piece on the very edge of the roof.  
There is a whistle from the trail, and Steve looks over to see Scott stepping over a fallen branch, a bag in one hand, one end of a plastic-wrapped mattress in the other.  
Steve lets out a soft huff of surprise. He didn’t expect Scott to make good on his promise and bring a new one.  
Holding the other end of the mattress is a man dressed in black, the shield on his sleeve and the badge pinned to his chest tells Steve he’s with the police.

“Steve? You there?” Scott calls out, and turns to give his friend a worried look. “You think the ghost got him?”  
The police officer laughs and props the mattress up against a nearby tree.  
“I’m serious,” Scott whines. “You didn’t see what-”  
Steve whistles, and the officer's head snaps up, tracking the sound. Steve waves at them, collecting up his tools before climbing down to the porch.  
“Scott,” he sets the hammer down on the porch rail. “Good to see you.”  
“I brought you a new one,” Scott points to the mattress. “After the whole… yeah. Sorry it took a couple of days, had to order it in.”  
“Thank you,” Steve comes down the steps to greet him. “I really appreciate it.”  
Scott sets the bag on the grass and shakes his hand before turning to introduce him to the officer. “This is Sam Wilson, Saranac Lake's Police Chief.”  
Steve surreptitiously wipes his hands on his jeans, and tries to smile. It doesn’t reach his eyes. It barely reaches his mouth.  
“Steve Rogers,” he holds out his hand and looks Sam straight in the eye. “Good to meet you.”  
Sam takes a good look at the purpling bruises around Steve’s eye, but takes his hand. “Good to be met. You settling in okay?”  
“Yeah,” Steve shrugs. “A bit of a learning curve, you could say.”  
Sam huffs and takes a look around, his gaze lingering on the firepit before being drawn to the still and silent lake.  
“Do you mind if I ask what the Chief of Police is doing all the way out here?” Steve asks, a bite in his tone.  
Sam gives Steve an easy smile regardless. “Scott brought my attention to the vandalism of your property. Came to check it out.”  
Steve shrugs, carefully nonchalant. “Nothing to see.”  
“You mind if I take a look anyway?”  
Steve takes a step to one side and waves towards the cabin. “Knock yourself out.”

Sam goes on ahead while Steve gives Scott a hand getting the mattress up the steps and into the cabin. They prop it up against the wall while Sam scuffs his boot against the splintered floorboards in front of the couch.  
“Any disturbances since you moved in?” Sam asks lightly.   
Steve thinks of the damp, dragging sounds he hears under the floor every night and shakes his head. “Nothing.”  
“Uh-huh,” Sam hums, looking unconvinced. “Probably kids. There’s a summer camp down at Fish Lake. A bunch of bored teens must’ve come up here, found an empty cabin-”  
“Fish Lake is, like, fifteen miles away,” Scott blurts out.   
Sam raises his eyebrows at Scott, who mumbles an apology and falls silent.  
“Like I say,” Sam turns back to Steve. “Probably kids. But you see anything suspicious, you give me a call.”  
“I will,” Steve nods.  
“I mean it,” Sam says firmly. “Anything at all.”  
Steve huffs, and this time his smile comes a little easier.   
“Alright,” Scott claps his hands together. “What can we do to help out?”  
Steve shakes his head sharply. “Oh no, it’s fine. You must be busy enough.”  
Sam lets out a bark of laughter. “Are you kidding me? You’ve been around town, right? It’s not exactly gangs roaming the streets.”  
“I’ve got nothing scheduled today either,” Scott adds with such a hopeful look that Steve deflates a little.  
Fine. If something comes lurching out of the woods at least it’ll be three against one.  
Scott nudges the bag forward. “I brought takeout.”  
Steve peers into the bag and sees several foil wrapped packages and a case of beer.   
“Well, in that case…” he says softly.

Sam looks at feeble woodpile against the back of the cabin and shakes his head. He picks through the handful of tools Steve bought from town and starts sucking air through his teeth, and Scott hastily points out that the previous owners left some things in the shed. Steve follows them out back at a wary distance, gripping his claw hammer so tightly that his knuckles are taut and pale.  
The hinges have rusted shut, and Sam manages to lever upon the door. Nothing springs out at them, but Steve doesn’t relax his grip as Scott drags out an old hand push lawn mower and checks it over.  
“Hey, this still works,” he calls, pushing it back and forth. The dull blades chew at the long grass, until they get tangled in the mechanism and the mower grinds to a halt. “Oh. Sorry. The blades just need a bit of sharpening.”  
Sam laughs. “Gonna take you all day to mow your lawn! How much land you got here?”  
Steve has no idea, and turns to Scott.  
“Two acres. There should be boundary markers but…” Scott looks at the surrounding woods. “They might have a couple of trees on them by now.”  
Sam pulls out gardening equipment as Scott talks, laying out a shovel, fork and hand tools in the long grass. “Give me a hand?” he calls, and Steve sets down the hammer and goes to help.  
Together they lift out a pair of sawhorses and put them to one side. They’re sturdy and well worn, and Steve hopes he won't need to resort to burning them to stay warm.  
With the shed cleared out, it’s a lot easier to take a look around, and Steve finds a box full of tools, a little rusty but still good, and some whetstones. He turns them around in his hands, blocks of rough stone that fit in the palm of his hand, one side dark grey and course, the other pale and fine-textured. Sam finds a pair of axes, a short-handled carpenter’s axe and a longer felling axe. He brings them out into the sunlight, and pulls Steve to one side.  
“You ever handled an axe before?” he asks, taking the whetstone out of Steve’s hand and spitting on the coarse side.  
Steve considers lying. “No,” he admits.  
“First thing is to keep them sharp,” Sam draws the stone across one side of the axe blade, stroking along the edge until it loses its dullness and takes on a shine, then holds it out. “Here. You’re gonna be doing this a lot.”  
Steve takes the whetstone and axe, giving Sam a dubious look before spitting on the stone and working it over the other side of the blade. Sam takes the other whetstone and sets to work on the felling axe.  
“Now switch to the other side,” Sam taps the pale half of the whetstone. “You need to keep it wet, mind.”

Scott busies himself collecting up wood while they sharpen the axes, and Steve can admit to himself that he feels a little better having it to hand.   
There is a large tree stump down by the side of the cabin, it’s surface pitted with the cuts and slashes of a chopping block, and Sam positions an old log that Scott found in his gathering in the center of the block, its cut side facing upwards. He gives it a smack to make sure it’s stable and steps back, giving Steve an expectant look.  
“Go on, city boy,” he smirks. “Let’s see what you can do.”  
Steve looks at the log. There are cracks in the surface, cutting through the concentric rings, and it seems like as good a place as any to aim. He lifts up the axe, resting it against his shoulder while he adjusts his grip and gets used to the weight, and swings.  
It glances off the edge of the log, twisting the blade around and nearly wrenching the axe out of Steve’s hands. The log totters a little, but doesn’t fall over, and Sam bursts out laughing.   
Scott covers his mouth with his hand, but Steve can see his shoulders shaking as he tries not to laugh.  
They don’t mean any harm, so it’s hard to stay mad at them. Steve hefts the axe onto his shoulder and waits for them to get it out of their systems, before swinging the axe again.  
The blade slices off a corner of log, and Steve lifts the axe again and brings it down hard, slicing the log in two.  
Scott and Sam give him a little round of applause, and Steve bows politely before picking up one of the logs and setting it in place. His aim is a little off, and it’s not an even split, but as Sam said, he’d have plenty of time to practice.

Half the burritos are warmed in the ashes of the firepit and eaten with a bottle of beer apiece, though Sam makes do with a cup of black coffee. Sam also manages to snag the lawn chair found in the back of the shed and makes himself comfortable by the fire, while Steve and Scott sit on the deck overlooking the lake.  
“Kind of creepy, don’t you think?” Scott asks, struggling with the tail end of his burrito and spilling rice and beans into the water. “How quiet it is.”  
Steve taps the mouth of his beer bottle against his lower lip. “Quiet is good.”  
Scott falls silent, and takes another bite of burrito.  
“So what do you do?” Sam asks, swirling the dregs at the bottom of his cup. “When you’re not playing frontiersman.”  
Steve watches Scott's fallen rice drift out further into the lake and be swallowed up by fish, their wide mouths breaking the surface and gulping, sleek bodies twisting in the black water.  
“Illustrator,” He says absently, something on the edge of his memory.  
“What, like that Doonesbury guy?” Scott asks around a mouthful of tortilla.  
“No, nothing like that.” Steve shakes his head. “Botanical illustrations. Books, magazines, that kind of thing.”  
“How’s the pay?” Scott balls up his foil wrapper and tucks it into his pocket.  
“Terrible,” Steve snorts.  
Scott chuckles and gets to his feet, brushing the dust off his pants. “So, we should probably get going. It’ll be getting dark soon.”  
Steve murmurs in understanding, though he finds himself disappointed. It had been… nice. Spending time with people, good people.   
Not being alone.

“How about I swing by this weekend?” Sam suggests, and Steve wonders if it’s that obvious how out of his depth he is.  
“I don’t need your charity,” he mutters, feeling prickly and defensive.  
“Charity,” Sam snorts. “City boy like you won’t understand the finer details of small town life. We look out for each other.”  
“And stick our noses in other people's business,” Scott adds cheerfully.  
Steve ducks his head as Sam continues. “I’ll come by Sunday, bring my chainsaw and we can get to work on the rest of that logpile.”   
Steve folds his arms over his stomach and nods quietly.  
He watches as Scott and Sam collect up their things, Scott leaving the bag with the remaining food and beer in the kitchen. They say their goodbyes and head back up the trail before it gets too dark to see.  
Steve collects up the empty bottles and mugs, taking them into the kitchen to rinse out, and goes back outside to check on the fire.  
He stops by the lake and stares out at the still waters, at the insects skimming over the surface.   
“I’m not going anywhere,” he tells the silent depths. “I got no place else to go.”  
He feels vaguely foolish, talking to the lake like it was a person. But he knows, he knows, it’s not the water he’s talking to. He shoves his hands into his pockets, kicking his heels against the deck.   
“I reckon I should introduce myself, since we’re neighbours and all. I’m Steve.” He looks at the lake, a place so small and still and tucked away that it doesn’t even have a name. “I guess I’ll call you Bucky.”  
The air is turning cooler, but it’s warm by the fire, and he sits down for a minute to rest his eyes.

The fire dies down until there is nothing left but ash and embers, and Steve slumbers.  
The still surface of the lake ripples and something slips out of the water. Something long and black and bright, winding along the slope towards him. Another follows the first, sleek and serpentine, and feels its way along the grassy bank, curling around a clump of long grass and pulling itself forward.  
A shape rises up from the lake. A head, cocked to one side, its features obscured by a tangle of dark hair, lake water dripping down its broad shoulders. It crawls forward, hands digging into the dirt for purchase as it drags itself along, the dying fire limning its moon-pale skin, dragging the lower half of its body out of the water. The weight of its body sliding across the grass is a low susurrus, its trailing limbs gouging into the dirt as he climbs up, moving slowly towards the fire.  
The creature pauses in front of Steve, curled up in his chair, his breath clouding the air in short, shallow gasps, and straightens up. It looks almost human from the waist up, a narrow waist and broad chest, it’s arms taut and muscular, it’s hands black with mud. Flared out from its hips are tentacles, thick and dark and sleek. They wind along the grass, tapping against the stones around the firepit, and curling around the legs of Steve’s chair.  
The creature moves forward, resting one dirt-streaked hand on the chair seat, thumb brushing against the fabric of Steve’s jeans.  
Amongst the tangle of thick, dark hair are crystalline blue eyes, and the soft curve of lips as the creature leans closer. He feels a breath of air against his cheek, cold and sweet, like damp rich earth. It draws in a breath, a low hiss against its sharp, white teeth, and Steve lets out a scream.

He stumbles to his feet, his hands pushing at nothing as he tries to get away, knocking the chair into the fire, where the old dry wood starts to catch and burn.  
The fire flares up, painfully bright, and Steve backs away, his eyes watering. He spins around in the darkness, confused and disoriented. His hands won’t stop shaking.  
His throat aches, his chest burns, he can’t breathe.  
“Fuck,” he whines, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hand.   
He chokes back a sob, sucking in harsh gasps of air. His heart pounds like a hammer, every pulse sending a shockwave of pain through his chest.  
Nothing comes charging out of the forest towards him. Nothing wraps around his leg and drags him into the lake.   
Steve finally dares to look at the fire, and sees the lawn chair collapse into the flames.   
“Fuck.”  
He walks over to the fire and pushes a stray rock back into place with the toe of his boot. There’s not much that can be done to save the chair, so he lets it burn. He still feels twitchy and unsettled, and decides to leave the fire to burn out and go back to the cabin for the rest of the night.  
There is just enough light to see by, and he walks across the grass, his boot catching on something and tripping him over.  
He manages to throw out his hands in time but lands awkwardly, jarring his shoulder, sore from a long day of cutting wood, and clacking his teeth together hard enough to make his bruised jaw ache.  
He lets out a groan and lies in the long grass for a moment, and lets himself ache. He curses softly, rolling onto his back, and looks up at the clouded night sky. There are no stars and no moon, just bands of dark grey moving slowly overhead.  
Steve finally sits up, rubbing his shoulder and swearing under his breath, and searches around to see what tripped him.  
There’s something in the grass. A pile of branches, or some kindling, he can’t make it out in the firelight. He gets to his feet, rotating his shoulder back and forth until the ache lessens, and nudges the pile with the sole of his boot. It yields to pressure a little, and Steve figures the wood must be rotten, little use for storing overwinter. Still, Scott could have put it somewhere out of the way, not just leave it lying across the grass.  
He decides to take care of it in the morning, and fumbles his way up to the house. He pours himself a glass of water and takes a couple of aspirin, the glass clattering against his teeth as he takes slow, careful sips. He turns on the cold tap and holds his wrists under the water until his fingers turn numb, staring blankly as the water circles the drain.  
The mattress is still propped up against the wall, wrapped in plastic. Steve pushes it onto the floor and curls up in the middle, the plastic crackling every time he moves, and pretends to sleep until morning.

The sky is overcast as Steve walks up the trail to the main road, sending down a light mist of rain.  
The little parking lot across the road is empty, and Steve zips up his leather jacket and shelters under the tall pines while he waits.  
The trees around him shiver, sending down a flurry of dead pine needles. Steve’s heart skips a beat and he looks up, expecting to see a woodpecker or maybe a falcon.  
There is nothing there.  
Steve lets out a heavy breath and shoves his hands in his pockets, shifting from foot to foot to keep warm. He’s aching and blistered from working on the back yard, his shoulders stiff and sore.  
The rain gets steadily heavier, and he pulls up the collar of his jacket, pacing back and forth.  
There is the sound of an engine in the distance, and Steve walks out onto the road, blinking rain out of his eyes as he watches the vehicle approach.   
He raises his arm and flags down the black BMW as it gets closer, and it flashes its headlights in response. Steve points to the parking lot, and the car turns smoothly, the wheels crunching on the loose gravel as he walks across to meet his agent.   
The door opens and Nat climbs out, dressed in a brown suede jacket and heels. It’s not exactly hiking gear, and Steve winces at the thought of her hiking down the trail in her Manolo Blahniks.  
“Hey, Nat,” he says quietly.  
She puts her hands on her hips, ready to give him an earful, and her hands drop down when she sees his face. The scruff at his chin does a fairly good job of hiding his bruised jaw, but the yellowing bruises around his eye, the dark brown scab that bisects his eyebrow, aren’t so easy to hide.  
“Jesus Christ,” Natasha hisses, the rain and the six hour drive from New York forgotten. She reaches out to Steve, cradling his jaw in her hand. “That bastard.”  
Steve bows his head, making an abortive attempt to pull away from her. In truth he has missed her, missed how tactile she is, the kindness under all her bluster and noise.  
“I should have kicked his ass when I had the chance,” Nat scowls.  
Steve wraps his hand loosely around her wrist, and she rubs her thumb through his beard, her red painted nails scratching the bristles.   
“What are you doing here, Steve?” she sighs. “Playing Grizzly Adams?”  
Steve closes his eyes. “Did you see him?”  
Nat pulls her hand away, and Steve lets her, though it makes him ache a little.  
“Yeah, I saw him,” she glowers, walking back to the car.  
“How was he?” Steve hardly dares ask, but it’s impossible not to.  
Natasha doesn’t even turn around, just points a red-tipped finger at him as she opens up the trunk.  
“Don’t you fucking dare, Steve.” She snaps. “Why the fuck are you here? Why didn’t you call the police?”  
Steve shifts uncomfortably, curling in on himself. “You know why.”  
Nat hesitates, and lowers her hand. “I didn’t tell him where you were,” she says after a long silence.  
“I know you didn’t.”  
“Fucking Special Forces.” Nat stares at the contents of the trunk. “You know how to pick ‘em.”  
She starts to lift out a wide, flat box, and Steve hurries over to help her. “What’s all this?”  
“He smashed up everything you left,” Nat says grimly. “So I got you new ones.”  
“Nat…” Steve runs his finger over the design on the packaging, a plain illustration of a drafting table.  
“Don’t get too excited, it’s the cheapest model they had,” Nat huffs. “And I rescued your art crap.”  
She lifts out a large plastic toolbox, its dark grey exterior splattered with a dozen shades of acrylics, and a wooden case with three narrow drawers. Steve looks into the trunk, searching for what’s missing.  
“My portfolio?”  
“Is no more,” Nat admits. “I’ve still got some of your work down at the office, and reproductions so…”  
She bites her lip, and under her bravura Steve can see the guilt.  
“Hey,” he murmurs, curling an arm around her shoulder and pulling her towards him. “This is fine, it’s fine,” he murmurs, rubbing her shoulder. “It needed updating anyway. Thank you. Really, thank you.”  
Nat grumbles, but rests her head on his shoulder. “You’re an asshole, Rogers.”  
“I am,” Steve agrees.   
“I’m not carrying that fucking box.”  
Steve laughs, and it shifts something sharp and jagged lodged under his ribs. “Wouldn’t dream of asking.”

Steve manages to fit the drafting table under one arm and the wooden case under the other, and carries them down the trail. Nat picks her way along the path beside him, swinging the toolbox back and forth as she takes in the surroundings, the tubes of paint and brushes shifting about inside.  
The rain continues to fall, pattering softly through the trees and disturbing the usually still surface of the lake as they walk down to the cabin.   
Natasha casts a brief glance around the front yard, the fire pit that is slowly filling with ashy water and the private beach leading down to the lake. The water lapping at the shore is churned up and muddy, and there are deep gouges in the dirt that weren’t there earlier.  
Steve pointedly ignores the trampled, mud-streaked grass, following Natasha as she climbs the steps to the porch, sheltering from the rain while Steve follows, the cardboard box getting harder to hold onto as it soaks up rainwater.  
“It’s open,” he calls out. Nat tries the door and finds it unlocked.  
“Really?” she asks as he comes up the steps. “Do you want to get burgled?”  
Steve sets down the desk and pushes his wet hair out of his eyes. “No one’s gonna rob me out here, Nat.”  
She doesn’t look convinced, but holds the door open while he brings in the desk and case, propping them up against the far wall.  
Natasha takes a look around and snorts. “Are you squatting here or something?”  
“No,” Steve’s voice pitches up defensively. “I’m just… there’s a lot to take care of.”  
“You’re sleeping on a bare mattress on the floor.”  
Steve shrugs, wiping his hand over his damp beard. “Not gotten around to fixing the bed.”  
At the mention of a bed Nat looks around for the bedroom, and ends up walking into the tiny bathroom. Steve takes a deep breath and counts to five.  
“There’s no towels.” Nat shouts.  
“Come on, Nat,” he murmurs. “Give me a break.”  
Nat says nothing while Steve unpacks the table and starts figuring out how to put it together, the cardboard he puts to one side for burning later. She goes over to the kitchen and turns on the burner, pressing the ignition switch until a spark hits the gas and it flares up.  
“It runs on propane,” Steve explains. “Fed in from some canisters out back of the house. Same with boiler, heats it up as you need it.”  
He doesn’t tell her that the canisters are in a steel cage padlocked shut, and something has tried to prise the metal bars apart.  
Nat turns off the burner and searches the kitchen, opening up the cupboards. She finds a half empty box of oatmeal and a jar of instant coffee, and slams the cupboards shut, making Steve flinch and drop a handful of screws.  
“Come on,” Nat says. “I’ll let you buy me lunch.”

They walk back up the track to Nat’s car, her expensive shoes sinking into the soft earth. She gives Steve a glare, like it’s his fault she came upstate in ill-advised shoes. “If I break a heel, you’re paying,” she grumbles.  
“Understood,” Steve mutters absently, listening out for movement in the trees under the fall of rain.  
They drive to Saranac Lake, and Steve gives directions to Borracho Taco.  
It’s a cheerful little place, with a red brick frontage and large windows, the area around the door densely plastered with posters and adverts for local events and fundraisers. Inside the walls are painted terracotta, a blackboard along one side where the day's specials are scrawled. There are a few people tucked in the booths having a late lunch, eating tacos and chatting quietly.  
Nat takes herself off to the bathroom to dry off while Steve goes up to the counter to pick a menu. He looks around for the owner, but the counter and kitchen are both empty.  
“Luis?” he calls warily.  
“Down here, brah,” comes the answer from below. He leans over and sees Luis sitting on the floor, restocking the shelves under the counter.  
Luis smiles brightly up at Steve “Hey, still not dead! ‘Sup?”  
“Hey,” Steve gives Luis an awkward little wave. “Yeah, still not dead.”  
“That’s great, pal!” Luis tucks the last of the napkins away and grabs the edge of the counter, hauling himself to his feet. “You eating? You gotta eat, you’re getting way too skinny.”  
Luis reaches over the counter and pokes Steve in the stomach, and Steve scuttles out of his reach.   
Nat comes out of the restroom and Luis straightens up sharply, gripping the counter. “Oh,” he says weakly.  
She walks over join Steve with a little more sway in her step than usual, and curls her hand around his arm. “So what’s good?” she purrs.  
“Behave,” Steve whispers, then says a little louder. “It’s all good.”  
“Holy shit Steve, pardon my language an’ all. But is this your girl?” Luis’ eyes widen. “Not to say you’re property or anything, ma’am. I’m sorry, it slipped out, it’s just that we all know fuck all about Steve here, he’s all like _asilvestrado_ and shit. Not to say you’re loco, brah, but you do live in a cabin in the woods.”  
Nat stares blankly at him for a moment, trying to process it all.  
Steve makes the introductions while she catches up. “Luis, this is my agent, Nat. She’s down here from New York.”   
“Oh yeah, you do the drawings and shit, I remember,” Luis nods. “The tostones are real good,” he adds to Nat. “Sorry, you’re very beautiful, and it kinda makes me nervous.”  
She breaks into a smile. “Thank you Luis. I’ll have the tostones.”  
Luis claps his hands together. “You won’t regret it. They’ll be the best damn thing you ever tasted.”  
Steve looks over the menu. “I’ll have the-”   
“Shut it, you,” Luis wags his finger. “You’ll eat what you're damn well given. I leave it up to you, you’ll get a fucking burrito. You need vegetables and shit, man.”  
“I like the burrito,” Steve grumbles.  
“Then I’ll make you one to take home.” Luis promises, and turns to Nat, his expression switching to all sweetness and light. “What do you guys want to drink?”  
“Black coffee,” Nat answers, looking delighted.  
“I’ll have coffee too,” Steve says.  
“You’ll have juice and you will be grateful,” Luis says, his eyes still on Nat. “Go sit yourselves down, I’ll be right over.”

Nat picks one of the booths and slides across the bench, making herself comfortable and grinning widely.  
“What are you so pleased about?” Steve shuffles into the seat opposite.  
Luis brings over a cup of coffee for Nat, and a glass of orange juice for Steve, pushing it towards him. “Vitamins, brah.”  
Steve swallows down the juice in a single, long gulp as Luis walks away, grimacing at the sharp taste. Natasha sips at her coffee with evident satisfaction, before choosing her words carefully.  
“You got someone looking out for you,” she says. “I’m guessing more than the one, if you’d let them.”  
Steve nods. “Yeah. They’re good people.”  
Nat turns her coffee cup in its saucer thoughtfully. “It makes it… less hard to go back to New York. Knowing that you probably won’t be dead in a ditch before the week’s out.”  
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Steve grumbles, but he understands what she’s saying.  
They fall silent, watching the rain fall outside and soak into the street, until Luis brings them their food.  
Nat has three crunchy fried tortillas topped with chilli and crumbles of sharp, salty cheese. To Steve, Luis presents a large bowl of vegetable stew, leeks and beans floating in a light broth with chewy kernels of field corn.  
“Pozole,” Luis tells him proudly, setting cutlery and napkins on the table. “Eat up.”  
Steve picks up his spoon and prods at the stew, stirring it around before cautiously tasting a little. The broth is light and soothing, with a sharp tang of lime. Steve scoops up another spoonful, and another, until the bowl is empty. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, at looks at Nat, feeling slightly guilty that she is still demurely eating her first tostone.  
“Sorry,” he mumbles.

Luis comes over to check on them, and insists on bringing Steve a second serving, waving off his protests. Steve mutter a soft thanks as Luis returns with a fresh bowl in one hand and a jug of coffee in the other, setting the bowl down before him.  
“C’mon, eat up,” Luis pats him on the shoulder. “Get some nutrition in ya, people will start thinking you're the ghost. You want more coffee, ma’am?”  
“Ghost?” Natasha perks up, holding up her cup for a refill. “You have ghosts?”  
Luis shakes his head and waves the jug towards Steve, who draws his spoon through his bowl and shrugs.  
“They say the lake is haunted,” he admits.  
“The folks who had the place before you? Barnes, I think it was. Said something was lurking in the woods, used to come creeping around the house at night. They could hear it moving about in the yard.” Luis shivers.  
“It’s just noise,” Steve says quietly. “Just wind in the trees.”  
“It’s gotta be, like, a poltergeist or some shit.” Luis leans over, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial hush. “It wrecked up the place, tried to pull the roof off, like it was a little can of sardines. Ain’t no lakeside breeze I’m telling ya.”  
“It was just a panel, Luis,” Steve scrapes a thick slice of leek up the side of his bowl, nudging it into the spoon with his thumb. “Probably just kids from the summer camp.”  
“It’s a thirty mile round trip,” Luis twists up his mouth. “Who’s got time for that shit?”  
Steve doesn't have an answer, and shoves the chunk of leek into his mouth, chewing silently.

They finish up, and Steve goes to the counter to deal with the bill. Luis rings up the total and pushes a foil wrapped burrito towards him.  
“Hardly any vegetables, man, I swear on my mothers life.” Luis grins. “Nothing in there but pork ‘n’ beans.”  
The last time he’d said that, it had been full of tomato and avocado. And from the taste a handful of habanero peppers. Steve had eaten it anyway, even though it made his eyes water and his tongue burn.  
“Thank you,” Steve says softly, tucking it into his jacket for later.  
“You come back.” Luis leans forward. “Look after yourself, yeah?”  
“Will do.” Steve pats the counter between them. “See you later.”  
Nat waits for him at the door, and they duck out into the street. The rain isn’t showing any sign of letting up, but Nat still insists on dragging Steve to a department store down the street.  
She picks out a couple of cable knit sweaters, a bath towel and a some fitted sheets, throwing them at Steve, who folds them over his arm as he follows her around the store. Nat lingers over the selection of quilts and blankets, settling on a woolen blanket in dark green and a quilt made of squares of muted, earth toned fabric before shoving Steve towards the cashier's desk, and insisting on paying.  
“Nat,” Steve grumbles. “I’m not a charity.”  
“This isn’t charity,” Nat smiles at the cashier, who has no doubt already memorised everything she’s heard and the whole town will have heard about it before sunset. “I’ll be taking it out of your next commission.”  
They both know it’s a lie, but Steve makes a show of muttering about the price anyway.

Steve feels like a pack mule, loaded down with bedding, as he follows Nat down to the car. He shoves it all into the trunk, and takes a moment to be grateful that he’s not having to pile it all on the back of his bike.  
He climbs into the passenger seat, and directs Nat out of town, along the winding narrow lane through the lakes.  
“You gonna be okay?” Nat asks suddenly.  
Steve doesn’t answer immediately. He thinks about the cabin and the still, silent lake. About the shifting stones around the firepit and the mud streaks that stretch from the water to his front door.  
“Yeah,” he says slowly. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”  
Nat stares at the road ahead, her hands clenching and unclenching around the wheel. “You got enough money?”  
“I said I’m fine,” Steve huffs. “But if you’ve got work…”  
“Thank fuck,” Nat points to a folder tucked in among the papers on the dashboard.   
Steve picks it out and leafs through the notes, humming to himself. “No problem,” Steve gives her a crooked smile. “Gotta do something with my evenings.”  
They arrive at the trail and Nat parks alongside the road, letting the engine idle while Steve takes his stuff out of the trunk, the folder clamped between his teeth.  
He takes it out long enough to lean through the open window and kiss her cheek, and promises to be in touch soon before stepping back and giving a wave as she drives off down the road.

The cabin is the same as he left it, and he dumps his bedding on the mattress for the time being. He leaves the burrito in the kitchen for later and strips off his wet jacket, hanging it up over the bath to drip, and pulls on one of the new sweaters. The price tag pokes him in the hip until he tears it off and tosses it on the log pile. He fills the kettle and puts it on the stove, fetching a mug from the sink and shaking out a little coffee into his cup. He looks out the window at the back yard while he waits for the water to boil, and sees the vegetable patch that he had spent all morning working on in disarray. The stakes and twine have been pulled up and the freshly turned dirt flattened down and churned into mud.  
“Bucky,” Steve chides softly. “Not helping.”  
He leaves the garden for another day, and lights a fire before it gets dark, leaving the kindling to catch and burn while he finishes setting up the desk. He positions it in front of the window overlooking the lake, and hangs a couple of lanterns from the ceiling overhead. The last owners left behind several camping lanterns. A couple run on solar power, and the rest on batteries, though they need replacing. He can work for the remaining few hours of daylight, and the solar lamps should last him well into the night.  
He opens up his art case and checks the contents, the pencils and paints all in one piece, though several of his pastels are broken. He picks out a notepad and some pens, setting them out to do some warm up sketches with his coffee before getting to work, and stacks the cases out of the way for now.  
The lake draws his eye as he sits down to work, sharpening a pencil and brushing the shavings to one side. He means to draw the lake, the circle of trees lining the silent water and the mountains stretching up to the sky. Instead he sketches a figure with broad shoulders and coiling, serpentine limbs spreading out from its waist. Its long fingers dig into the mud sketched around it, dragging itself forward. With black ink he adds hair falling in twists and tangles that obscures the creature's face, but for a hint of snarling mouth and sharp teeth and shining eyes.   
Steve looks down at his creation and suppresses a shudder. He should tear the page out the book, crumple it up into a ball and throw it onto the fire.  
He does tear out the page, slowly and carefully, and pins it to the cabin wall next to his desk. There it can watch over him while he works, and he can watch back.


	3. Come Sail Your Ships Around Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve’s heart kicks painfully, hard enough to make him flinch, and pulses under his ribs, as though up until this moment it had forgotten how to beat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It should come as no surprise to any of you familiar with my fic that you are actually reading a love story
> 
> Many thanks to Eidheann for kicking the words into shape at short notive, and to Trish and Krycek for reading and yelling
> 
> Want to complain about Sebastian Stan and his annoying face? Come find me on [Tumblr](http://thelittleblackfox.tumblr.com)

Summer shifts into autumn overnight, and Steve wakes up to find the forest shrouded in mist, tendrils of fog drifting across the quiet surface of the lake.  
He takes his morning coffee out onto the deck and breathes in the crisp, chill air. As he sips his coffee, the forest seems to hold its breath.  
“Morning, Bucky,” Steve says to the lake.  
It has become a habit, to start each day with a good morning. To tell the ghost or whatever it is his plans for the day. He wishes it goodnight in the evenings, when he douses the firepit and goes indoors to work.  
It doesn’t make much of a difference. Something still crawls under the floorboards at night, and there are fresh drag marks that lead from the lake to the cabin every morning.  
He dug over the vegetable garden three times before Bucky got the message, and even then he had Scott and Luis help him mark out the borders with fallen pine trunks a foot thick. It had taken them half a day's work, but afterwards the ground was left undisturbed. Steve planted out a row each of garlic and onion, and a handful of spinach seeds to keep Luis quiet.  
He also left a cereal bar, propped up in front of the onion sets, after the guys had left. A plea maybe, an offering to the ghost. It was gone by morning, though he didn’t read anything into it. It could have been a rat or raccoon or something that ate it. And carefully left the wrapper where Steve had left it, weighed down by a stone.  
Steve swirls the dregs of his coffee around in his cup and bites his lip. “I’m gonna be checking out the boathouse today…” Damn, this is so stupid. “See what’s still in there.”  
He swallows the last of the rapidly cooling coffee and taps the rim of the cup with his fingertips, drumming out a nervous little rhythm.  
“That alright with you?”  
The lake doesn’t answer, and Steve watches a bird swoop over the black water, dipping down to skim across the surface. His grip on his mug tightens, his heart kicking out of time, but the bird soars up into the air again, a cluster of insects caught in its beak.  
Steve sighs, quietly admonishing himself, and goes back inside.  
He rinses out his cup in the kitchen and leaves it on the draining board. The mattress is still on the floor of the main room, the quilt in a tangled heap on top. He nudges the mattress with the toe of his boot, revealing the short handled axe tucked underneath, and picks it up. The weight is familiar in his hand, the wooden shaft warm and fitting easily in his grip.  
He doubts that, should it come to it, he’d be able to use it against another person, but it’s a reassurance nonetheless.  
He walks out onto the porch and takes a deep, steadying breath.  
“Come on, move,” he hisses, and starts moving before he can talk himself out of it again.

The boatshed is a short walk from the cabin. A small, wooden building large enough to house a small boat, perched on the edge of the lake. There is a ramp leading from the padlocked double doors down to the water’s edge, half rotted and cracked. Saplings have grown around it since the cabin was abandoned, blocking the way to the entrance and obscuring the building, blending it into the surrounding forest. Steve has to make use of his axe to clear a path, stacking the felled trees to one side to use later.  
He approaches the doors, avoiding stepping on the ramp, as he’s pretty sure his foot would go right through the buckled, greying wood.  
On the ring of keys he was given by Scott when he first moved in is a small yale key that fits in the padlock. The mechanism clicks as Steve turns the key, and the lock springs open. He twists the shackle out of the latch holding the door shut, and pulls back the stiff metal bolt, hooking the padlock back in place to keep from losing it, and pulls the door open.  
The hinges are seized up from disuse, and shriek as he forces open the doors, a high pitched whine that sets Steve’s teeth on edge.  
There are no monsters waiting inside ready to pounce. There is no ghost howling and clambering the walls. Ferns and vines push their way up through the gaps in the wooden floor, the only things that can grow in the weak light from a couple of windows set high up the walls at the rear. There is lake mud smeared along the walls, dry and cracked. In the center of the shed, taking up most of the space, is a row boat.  
It’s not much more than a dinghy, squared at the back and with a pointed prow, a length of rope tied to a loop at the point. Steve steps into the shed and moves closer, his palm sweating against the handle of his axe, and looks into the boat.  
There is a thick layer of mud in the bottom of the boat, the surface dry and tacky. Otherwise the boat looks sound, a storage box built into the back and a single bench seat across the middle. A pair of oars lie on the floorboards underneath it.  
Steve takes a step back, and takes a quick look outside. The lake is silent as ever, the trees around him rustling in the breeze. He chews his lip, shifting from foot to foot, and finally reaches into the shed, and wraps his hand around the rope.  
It takes several tugs to unseat the boat from where it’s lying, stuck in place by drying mud. He carefully places the axe on the grass by the ramp and winds the rope around both his hands, planting his feet firmly apart and pulling again, finally getting it moving forward, and slides it down the ramp.  
The old wood crunches and splinters under the weight, but holds together as Steve draws the dinghy down to the water’s edge. It slips down the last few feet as Steve bends to retrieve the axe, pushing past him as he tugs on the rope, trying to slow it down, and launches itself into the water.  
For a minute he thinks it’s going to sink, but it rights itself and bobs gently in the water, sending ripples across the flat surface of the lake that are quickly stilled.

Steve pulls the boat along the lake, tugging at the rope erratically as he tries to keep it under control. It rocks from side to side, its pointed nose nudging into the shore and then turning out to the lake while Steve pulls on the rope, cursing under his breath.  
He reaches his little stretch of beach and pulls the boat up to shore, the hull digging an unsettlingly familiar deep groove into the dirt.  
Steve fetches a bucket and a stiff bristled broom from the shed and takes them down to the water. He fills up the bucket and sluices out the boat with lake water, scrubbing at the caked-on mud with the broom and tipping it over to let the water drain, before righting it and throwing in more water.  
The sun is high up in the sky when the water finally runs clear, and Steve fetches a last bucket of fresh water from the kitchen, red-faced and soaked in sweat and muddy water, and gives the boat a last rinse.  
He pulls it a little further up the beach and leaves it to dry out in the sun, before sprawling out in the long grass and catching his breath.  
He drifts a little, neither asleep nor awake, until his muscles start to ache. He groans softly and sits up, checking that the boat is still where he left it, and wobbling to his feet.  
He strips off his damp shirt, the breeze raising goosebumps on his skin, and slumps his way back into the cabin. He washes off the worst of the mud at the kitchen sink and pads into the main room, searching through his pile of clothes for something warm and relatively clean and settling on a sweater that only has a few mud spatters.

At the back of the shed, along with the half-empty cans of paint, pots of rusty nails, and solidified tubes of superglue, is a fishing rod.  
Steve knows next to nothing about fishing, other than a vague idea of bait going on the hook and the hook going in the water until fish happens. Scott has enthused about fishing several times when Steve mentioned his plans to live off the land, gesturing enthusiastically while terms like ‘split shot weight’ and ‘flywheel’ sailed merrily over Steve’s head.  
He carries the rod out into the sunlight and pulls at the end of the line, the dull silver hook catching his finger. The line plays out, dragging through the loops embedded along the rod's length, the reel spinning slowly. Steve shifts the rod in his grip, taking hold of the handle and turning the reel, and the line draws in again.  
He needs bait, he knows that much, and takes the rod down to the lake, scratching his bristly chin while he debates what to use. Oats probably won’t work, or crumbled up cereal bars. Scott had recommended canned corn, but since Steve doesn’t have any, he decides on worms. He’d seen some while digging over the vegetable patch, so pokes around in the soil until he has a handful, and drops them into an empty tin can. The can gets tucked into the boat along with the rod and the axe, and Steve remembers about the oars.  
The boat shed is still silent and empty when he returns to it, but he doesn’t linger, grabbing both oars from the leaf-littered floor and retreating, dry branches snapping under his heavy boots.  
The oars seem sturdy enough, so he takes them back to the boat and drops them in. He pushes the boat down to the water, and pauses.  
The lake seems to wait for him, the glassy surface reflecting the cloud flecked sky. Steve pushes the boat out onto the water, his feet sinking into the mud, and scrambles in as it drifts away from the shore.

The boat rocks wildly from side to side as Steve grabs onto the rails, trying to stay upright, and spins in a slow circle before drifting backwards to the center of the lake. Steve starts to shifts forward, shuffling towards the bench, but the boat lurches to one side, nearly sending him overboard. He crouches down, his feet flat, and tries to inch forward.  
Every tremor in his legs, every twitch of his arms, seems to telegraph down to the boat. It lists from side to side, and Steve pitches himself in the opposite direction, overcompensating and making his tenuous balance more unstable.  
Steve finally drops to his hands and knees, and shuffles along until he reaches the bench. He manages to get seated, but facing the wrong way around, facing the prow, and groans softly.  
The boat drifts idly across the water, and Steve fits one of the oars into the eyelet positioned halfway down the side. The handle fits easily through the metal loop, and Steve reaches down into the boat for the other one.  
He turns back to grab the first oar, only to find that it has slipped loose of the eyelet, and is floating a few feet away in the water.  
Steve swears softly, and pushes the remaining oar into the water, trying to turn the boat around and go after it.  
The oar snags on something, and Steve wrestles with it a moment before pulling it free.  
“Fuck,” he mutters, and watches the lost oar drift further out of reach.  
Maybe he can walk around the lake later on, and see if it has drifted to the shore. Or he can use the whole damn boat as firewood and save himself the bother.  
Steve looks up at his surroundings. The lake is eerily silent, the ripples sent out by the boat circling out across the water. Beyond the shore stands the hardwood forest, tall pines and maples stretching up to the circle of sky overhead.  
It is beautiful, Steve thinks to himself. It is nothing like New York City, nothing like anything he has ever seen.

The worms have crawled out of their can, and are working their way along the boat. Steve picks one up carefully, wary of crushing it. He takes the hook on the end of his line, and holds it up to the worm. It squirms in his trembling fingers, flicking back and forth as he pushes it against the hook. The point catches its skin, but doesn’t impale it, and the worm twists away, writhing out of Steve’s hold and dropping to the floor.  
The hook is stuck to his finger, and Steve yanks it off, a bead of blood welling up where the hook scraped his skin.  
His hands are shaking. Shaking over a fucking _worm_ , and Steve rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand.  
He picks up the worm and drops it back in the can, and sits back on the bench, moving with the boat as it rocks in the water.  
He takes a deep, steadying breath, filling his lungs with damp air, clean and crisp, and reaches into his pocket for a cereal bar.  
He tears the wrapper open, and picks out a raisin from the pressed oat bar. The texture is far too similar to the worm between his fingers, and he grimaces as he pushes it onto the hook.  
He pulls out a little of the line with his fingertips, and flicks it out into the water. The line trails on the surface just by the boat, and Steve tries again. He manages to get the line a little further out the second time, and props the fishing rod against the boat, bracing it with the heel of his boot. The bock rocks back and forth with the movement, and he holds onto the bench sucking in shallow breaths and counting to five. When it settles down he pinches off a corner of cereal bar and crumbles it into the water, tucking the rest back into his pocket.  
The boat drifts slowly across the lake, and Steve sits back and waits.

After about ten minutes, he realises that fishing is the most boring thing he’s ever done.  
The view is beautiful, but he’s never been one to sit idly and watch the world go by, and he regrets not bringing his sketchbook. He could have spent the time working, or at least doing some studies.  
The worms find a damp, shady corner at the stern and huddle up together, and Steve watches them curl around each other. There is something familiar about the way they move, the way their limbs intertwine, but he can’t place it.  
He sits back, rubbing absently at the knot of tension at the nape of his neck, and decides to give himself an hour. After that, if he hasn’t caught anything, he’ll go back ashore and figure something out.  
The bench isn’t the most comfortable thing to sit on either.  
With nothing else to do, Steve looks back at the cabin, an isolated clearing on the edge of the densely forested lake. It looks in far better condition than when he first arrived, the woods around the porch cleared and the roof repaired. He is mulling over the idea of extending the porch when there is a tug on the fishing line.

Steve grabs the rod, and the boat lists, dangerously close to flipping over. He throws himself back, trying to compensate, and the boat lurches, sending waves across the lake.  
Steve steadies himself, the rod gripped tightly in his hand, and turns the spool slowly. The line slackens instead of tightens, and he swears softly, turning the winch the other way. The mechanism jams, and he has to twist it back and forth, the boat rocking with his movements, until the line starts reeling in.  
There is movement just under the surface, and Steve catches sight of a sleek brown body, it’s tail thrashing. The fish twists around, tugging on the line, and the reel unspools a half turn in his hand.  
“Oh, come on!” Steve whines, and turns the reel again, the fish fighting him every inch.  
Steve stands up, shifting his stance as the boat tilts, and slowly pulls the rod upwards, dragging the bastard fish in. He lowers the rod again, quickly reeling in the line as it slackens, and the fish breaks the surface, the water churning in its struggle.  
Steve pulls up the rod again, and the line goes slack as the fish stills. He lets out a triumphant yell as he starts drawing it in, and the bastard catches him off guard and starts fighting again.  
Steve loses his balance, wobbling precariously, as the rod is pulled from his hand.  
“No!” he yells hopelessly, reaching after it.  
The boat flips over as Steve tumbles towards the water, adding insult to injury by cracking him over the head and punching him down under the surface.  
Bright sparks dance in front of his eyes and he chokes, his mouth filling with water as the sinking boat forces him down into the dark, where the light never reaches.

Steve coughs, lake water spilling from his mouth, and turns his head to one side.  
There’s a dead weight on his chest, shifting every time he draws in a rattling breath to cough again, lake water warm and gritty as it spills down his chin, trickling through his beard.  
He’s soaked to the skin, his hair plastered to his forehead, and there’s no part of him that doesn’t ache.  
“Fuck,” he wheezes, and wipes the dirt and water out of his eyes, blinking rapidly until his vision clears.  
He’s lying on the stretch of beach in front of his cabin, the boat pulled up alongside him, both oars lying in the dirt. Next to them is a tin can, the last of the worms making its way slowly towards the long grass. There is a brown trout lying across his chest.  
Steve sits up, pressing the palm of his hand to the back of his head, where a sizeable lump has formed, and the trout rolls into his lap.  
It must have been caught with a fishing spear or something, there is a jagged hole in the back of his head, its lower jaw a bloody mess.  
Steve picks up the trout. He needs both hands to do so, as the damn thing must weigh four pounds. It’s sightless eyes stare past him, and Steve can feel laughter bubbling up in his chest.  
The ghost of Round Pond had pulled him out of the lake, then went back into the water to rescue his boat, and even got his damned bastard fish.  
It isn’t a ghost.  
Bucky isn’t a ghost.

Steve struggles to his feet, still cradling the trout in his arms, and hobbles down to the shore. His boots are drenched, and squelch with every step. He clears his throat and looks out at the silent, dark water.  
“Um,” he starts, his throat sore and roughened. “Bucky?”  
Insects buzz lazily along the shoreline, and the lake does not answer.  
“Can I call you Bucky?”  
The trout is heavy in his arms, and the cold breeze chills him to the bone.  
“Um. Thank you. For…” Steve looks down at his ruined boots. “Thank you.”  
It’s not enough, not nearly enough, and he stumbles back up the beach.  
The fire in the pit has burned down to embers, and he puts the fish down while he builds it back up again, the coals hissing as lake water drips down from his clothes and soaking hair.  
He takes the fish back to the cabin, kicking off his boots at the door to deal with later, and heads inside. He fills the kitchen sink with cold water and drops the fish in it, the head and most of the tail flopping out onto the counter either side. He folds the fish around, pulling its tail around to touch its nose, and finally submerges it underwater, then gathers up clean clothes and goes for a shower.  
He sets the water to as hot as he can stand, and huddles under the shower head until he feels a little less like a walking corpse. He washes quickly, rubbing shower gel into his hair and scrubbing it through his beard, sluicing away all the mud and shaking terror.  
The water is cold before he’s done, and he shuts off the tap and leans against the tiled wall, and tries to figure out what the hell he should do now.

Steve towels himself off and gets dressed, dumping the soaking clothes in the bathtub to deal with later, and goes out to the kitchen. He collects up a chopping board, a sharp knife, and cast iron pan. A poke around in the cupboard fetches up a tin of potatoes that gets added to his pile, along with a couple of foil wrapped pats of butter that Luis pretends not to see him pocketing whenever he’s in Borracho.  
He takes everything out to the firepit, his bare feet crunching through the grass, and piles it up beside the firepit. There are enough coals to cook with, so he rakes the fire around and sets the pan down, wedging it in place, and leaves it to heat up while he goes back inside for the fish.  
He sits cross-legged on the grass, the chopping board in front of him, and hacks off the head. He’s not sure what to do with it, and would have to be a hell of a lot more hungry to consider eating it, so throws it back into the lake. Maybe there’s something out there that does want it.  
The unfortunate trout bobs on the surface for a moment, before something pulls it down to the depths.  
Steve has never been much of a cook, and hasn’t even handled a raw fish before. He has a vague idea about filleting, and makes a cut at the tail end, drawing the blade parallel to where he thinks the bones are, and lifts the fillet away.  
It’s terrible, if he’s honest with himself. The cut is ragged and half the flesh is still clinging to the rest of the fish. Steve puts the fillet to one side and turns the trout over, shifting the knife in his grip and starting again.  
The second attempt is a little better, and he throws the ragged skeleton, the tail still attached and whole, into the lake. It spins counter-clockwise, and is quickly pulled under.

The butter goes into the hot pan, and Steve opens the can of potatoes and throws them in, squashing down the larger ones with the flat of his knife and leaving them to crisp up. When they are browned around the edges he shakes them to one side and adds the ragged fillets, skin side down, and leaves them to cook while he goes back to the cabin for a couple of plates and forks.  
He flips over each fillet with a fork when he gets back, the skins catching on the pan and tearing. He scrapes them off and flicks them into the fire, where they crackle in the embers and burn up.  
He gives each fillet a poke. They seem done, as far as he can tell, so he pulls the pan off the heat, cursing and dropping the scalding handle. He moves a fillet onto each plate, swearing softly as they break apart and flakes of trout drop into the fire, and divides the potatoes between them evenly.  
The less disastrous plate, where the fish is mostly whole and the potatoes not too burned, he carries over to the deck overlooking the water.  
“Bucky?” he calls softly.  
The lake is silent, and the trees lining the shore seem to watch him fidget with the plate in his hands, before setting it down on the deck.  
“I made dinner,” Steve takes a step back. “I hope you like it.”  
He turns away, feeling like a lumbering great idiot, and walks back to the firepit.  
There’s no one out on the lake watching over him. He must have gotten lucky and had his big, loud accident when a hiker or fisherman was passing nearby and-  
There is a dull scrape, like a plate being dragged across wooden boards, and Steve whips around.  
The plate is still on the deck, just a little bit closer to the edge than where he left it. Half the fillet is missing.  
Steve smiles, something small and fragile around the edges, and turns away again.  
He sits down by the fire, facing towards the cabin and away from the shore, and picks up his plate.  
The fish is a little underdone, still translucent in the middle, and the potatoes are black on one side from being left too long, but it’s the best meal he has eaten in months, in years.  
When he’s finished he walks back to the deck to collect the empty plate, and stacks it up with his own. The fork has disappeared, but he has more forks, and won’t miss it.  
He checks that the fire is safe to leave, but doesn’t put it out. It’ll be a cold night, and the warmth might be appreciated.  
He wishes Bucky goodnight, and takes the dishes inside, dumping them in the sink and switching on the solar lanterns.  
Outside the sun dips past the distant mountains, and dusk settles.  
Steve sits down at his desk, lays out a fresh sheet of paper, and starts sketching.

It’s almost a full week before they finally meet.  
Steve wakes up to the last good day of the year, the skies clear and a faint trace of mist on the lake that quickly burns off in the sun. He packs up a sketchbook and a bottle of water, and heads out into the forest.  
There is some kind of animal track that weaves between the trees, the dry leaves and fallen branches compressed into the dirt, and Steve follows it, with no real destination in mind. He keeps in sight of the lake, wary of getting lost in the miles of forest around him, picking out a path when the track disappears, or meanders.  
He finds the boundary markers of his property a mile or so out, a series of worn concrete posts in a lopsided line like a row of broken teeth, crumbling into the earth.  
Steve picks up the track again, hiking up a steep slope the skirts around the northern side of the lake. He’s pretty sure that if he follows the path, it’ll take him to the trail leading out to the main road, and feels a little thrill of satisfaction for something so simple as knowing where he is. Instead of moving away from the lake and seeking out the path, he turns inward, searching for water. The ground beneath his feet becomes stony, the trees thinning out.  
The trail opens out on a cliff face, and Steve stumbles, his boots slipping on loose stones and sending them rattling over the edge. He grabs hold of the nearest branch as a wave of vertigo hits him, screwing his eyes shut and clinging tightly while the world seems to twist and oscillate around him.  
He takes a shaking breath and cracks open one eye, and the trees oblige him by staying still. He opens the other eye and looks over the edge of the cliff, the shifting of his boots sending another handful of stone into the water below.  
It must be a thirty foot drop down to the lake, and a small, intrusive thought urges Steve to jump.  
Steve shakes his head. “Nope,” he mutters to himself, wrapping his arm around the nearest tree.  
From this angle, he can see that Round Pond is teardrop shaped, the cabin sitting on the wider curve. He slips off his backpack and sits down a safe distance from the edge, and unpacks his gear.

The sun idles its way across the sky as Steve sketches the papery bark of a nearby tree, and when he’s sick of bark, he draws his cabin across the water. The trees around him rustle gently, though Steve pays them no mind, the whole world narrowed down to the page in front of him.  
Something lands on his head. He brushes his hand through his hair and it falls to the ground, rolling to a stop in the dirt before him.  
Steve picks it up. It looks like some sort of seed pod, a spiny green casing on a short stem, split open to reveal white down inside. Steve holds the seed pod between thumb and finger, twisting it back and forth. A beech nut.  
He looks up, expecting to see a bird or squirrel foraging for food. Wide blue eyes, half hidden behind a tangle of dark hair, stare back at him.  
_I know you_.  
“Bucky?” Steve whispers.  
Beech nuts rain down on him, and Steve ducks instinctively as the branches creak and snap.  
He can just about make out Bucky moving between the trees, dark hair spilling across broad, pale shoulders. Below that is a blur of grey and green as he leaps from branch to branch, moving faster than Steve can track towards the cliff.  
“Bucky!” Steve shouts, pushing through the trees in pursuit. “Watch out!”  
He grabs hold of a last, straggling branch as he reaches the ledge, and watches in dismay as Bucky dives over the edge, his body a dark blur as he plunges into the water.  
Steve searches for a way down the cliffside, finding only a sheer drop either side of him. He swears to himself, and starts pushing his way through the trees, keeping the lake in his line of sight as finds a steep slope leading to the water and starts to works his way down.

The black water ripples, and Bucky breaks the surface, tipping back his head and shaking his hair out of his eyes.  
Steve stumbles to a halt, clinging to a scrubby little pine jutting out of the sloping earth, and watches as Bucky submerges again, only to reappear several minutes later, halfway across the lake. The water barely ripples as Bucky dives down again, and Steve tracks his movements to the densely forested shore below the trail leading to the cabin, until he is lost in the shadows.  
Steve’s legs are shaking too hard to stand, and he sits down heavily on the slope, one hand still wrapped around the pine, the bark digging into his palm.  
Something itches in the back of his head, something important. He can feel the shape of it, somewhere in the dark of his mind, feel the weight of it brush against his fingers. It feels momentous, too big to comprehend, something beyond his grasp.  
Steve pulls himself to his feet, the pine creaking ominously at the weight, and climbs slowly back up the slope, his knees threatening to buckle with every step.  
He finds his way back to his spot up on the cliff, and takes a long drink of water, stale and tepid from lying in the sun, and packs up his drawing gear.  
The ground is littered with beech nuts. They crunch under Steve’s boots as he collects his pencils and shoves them into his bag. He picks one up, and pulls a nut from its spiky husk. The shell is easy to peel, revealing a seed, which Steve pops into his mouth and chews. It tastes sweet, almost like pine nuts.  
Bucky must have been foraging for them, and Steve feels a twinge of guilt for alarming him.  
He picks up all the beech nuts he can find, picking them from their husks and putting them in his pockets.  
By the time he starts walking back to the cabin he has a decent handful, and peels them as he walks, stripping the thin shells and dropping them on the forest floor, like a breadcrumb trail leading home.

It’s still light when he reaches the cabin, and Steve sets to work building a fire. He fills a kettle and positions it over the flames, and putters around the yard, clearing up and doing odd jobs before it gets too dark to see.  
He toasts the beech nuts over the coals, and puts them on a plate to cool while he opens a can of chilli that would get him a ten minute lecture from Luis if he ever found out, and forks it into the pan to heat through. He picks up the plate of nuts and takes them out to the deck.  
“Bucky?” he calls out. It’s getting dark, the sun dropping past the trees, and the lake looks black in the firelight.  
Steve sets the plate down on the edge of the deck, and goes back to the fire to make himself some coffee. On impulse he fetches two cups from inside the cabin, along with his near-empty jar of coffee. He adds it to the mental list of things he needs to pick up in town.  
The plate is still where he left it, and Steve tamps down on his disappointment. He shakes coffee granules into his mug, and wraps a cloth around the kettle handle before lifting it off the fire.  
There is a rattle and scrape from the deck, and Steve bites down on a grin as he pours water into his cup and puts the kettle on one of the flat stones surrounding the fire.  
There was barely a mouthful of nuts, once they were peeled, and Steve doesn’t expect that it will take him long to finish them. Still, he gives Bucky time to finish up and leave, waits for his chilli to cook. He pulls the pan off the fire when it starts to bubble, remembering to use a cloth this time.  
The back of his neck prickles, like when he turns his back on the lake and he can feel the forest watching him, and he slowly turns around.  
“Hi,” Steve says softly.

Bucky picks the last nut from the plate and pops it into his mouth, cracking it between his teeth. They are odd looking in a way Steve can’t fathom, even and sharp.  
Bucky folds his arms on the wooden decking, and rests his chin on the back of his hand. Steve can only make out his bare shoulders, the rest of his body hidden by the decking, and no doubt submerged in the water.  
He is _beautiful_. Steve’s heart kicks painfully, hard enough to make him flinch, and pulses under his ribs, as though up until this moment it had forgotten how to beat.  
Bucky is more than beautiful, with his wide blue eyes and full lips twitched up curiously. He deserves to be rendered in oils by a better artist than Steve could ever be. Steve can’t tell if he wants to draw him or touch him, and does neither. He shifts from foot to foot, shoving his hands in his pockets.  
He had forgotten what it felt like, to want.  
“Aren’t you cold?” Steve blurts out, because along with everything he seems to have forgotten how to hold a conversation.  
Bucky shrugs, but doesn’t make any attempt to get out of the water and come closer to the fire. He looks so pale, but doesn’t shiver or huddle in on himself.  
Steve casts around, trying to think of something to say.  
“You want some coffee?” he offers.  
Bucky nods, and Steve picks up his untouched coffee and brings it over. He crouches down in front of Bucky, and tries not to stare as he holds it out.  
Bucky’s forehead creases, but he reaches out and takes the offered cup. His fingertips brush across Steve’s wrist, cool but not unpleasantly so, and he takes a sip.  
He grimaces, and spits the coffee out with a look of such disgust that Steve bursts out laughing, rocking back on his heels. Bucky glowers at him, before ducking down under the water, rising back up a moment later.  
He gargles, and spits a mouthful of water in Steve’s direction. He tries to duck the worst of it, falling on his ass, and chuckles as Bucky wipes his hand across his mouth.  
“Okay, it’s pretty bad coffee,” Steve admits.  
He reaches down to remove the offending cup, but Bucky grabs it, lightning-fast, and curls his hands around it defensively. Steve isn’t sure if he’s being territorial, or just soaking up the heat.  
Steve retreats to the fire, and makes another coffee. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to get a better brand of instant coffee next time he’s in town, something that doesn’t taste like battery acid.  
“It’s nice to finally meet you,” Steve keeps his eyes on the fire while he adds more wood. The words come a little easier that way. “I’m-”  
“Steve.” Bucky’s voice is a soft rasp and clatter that sounds like fingers being dragged through smooth river stones. “You’re Steve.”  
Something crooked and misshapen loosens in Steve’s throat. “What about you?” he asks. “You got a name?”  
Steve can hear the laugh in his voice when he answers.  
“Bucky.”

When Steve looks up from the fire Bucky is gone, but he can hear the sound of movement in the water, the soft splashing as he dives down. 


	4. Rain Your Kisses Down In Storms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is an odd, low sound in Steve’s ears, a keening, rising in pitch and volume as Bucky crawls towards him, blood spattering his pale skin.  
> “Shh,” Bucky murmurs, and Steve realises the sound is coming from him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter folks!  
> Thank you to [Brooklyn-Bisexual](brooklyn-bisexual.tumblr.com) for talking me into this fic, and hammering out a story with me. I love working with her, she's a dirty minded soul
> 
> Many thanks to Eidheann for coming to the rescue with beta reading, and to Krycek and Trish for moral support.  
> You can find me on [Tumblr](http://thelittleblackfox.tumblr.com)

“Hey Steve,” Luis calls, walking out onto the deck. “What you looking for?”  
“Bucky,” Steve replies absently, shielding his eyes from the glare of the midday sun as he scans the lake.  
He doesn’t see Bucky every day, though he would like to (and isn’t that something that squirms under Steve’s skin, listening out for sounds of him in the night, when sleep is far beyond his reach). He definitely doesn’t see Bucky if there are people at the cabin, helping out with clearing the yard and chopping wood for the fast-approaching winter.  
So why is he looking? Sam and Scott are making a racket with a chainsaw, and Luis is whistling to himself while helping Steve replace the rotten timbers on the porch. There's no way that Bucky would be within a mile of all this. But still, Steve hasn’t seen him in a couple of days. It’s not that he’s worried or anything, he just… misses it. Misses _him_.  
“What’s a Bucky?” Luis peers at the lake, and finds nothing of note.  
“Not a what, a who,” Steve turns away from the water, and starts walking back to the cabin. “He’s a… neighbour, I guess. I think he lives the other side of the lake.”  
Luis bounces on his toes, looking for any signs of habitation. There isn’t any, Steve knows. Luis gives up quicker than Steve did, and ambles over to the porch as Steve fits a new timber in place.  
“What’s he like?” Luis asks, fishing a couple of nails out of his pocket. “This Bucky guy?”  
Steve slots the timber into place. “Nice,” he says quietly. “He’s… he’s nice.”  
Luis’s expression clouds over, and he rolls the nails around in his hand. “Nice, huh?”  
“Yeah.” Steve ducks his head, aware that there is a blush creeping down his throat and staining his cheeks.  
Luis’ expression suddenly clears, and he lets out a delighted little squeak.  
Steve gestures impatiently for the nails, and hopes to any god listening that Luis will let it drop.  
“Is he cute?” Luis jiggles excitedly.  
Steve wipes his hand across his face. Maybe if he’s lucky, a pit will open up beneath him, and he can go tumbling down with the cabin to the center of the earth.   
“Yeah,” he replies, his voice muffled by his hand.  
Luis scrunches up his face and makes the kind of noise that, by rights, only dogs should be able to hear.  
“Oh man, that’s great! So is he single? Is he into you? I mean, you can tell, right? You can tell when someone’s into you, for sure.” Luis claps his hands together. “Aw damn, Sharon from the PTA is gonna be so pissed! She totally has the hots for you, I think it’s the whole liberal-minded lumberjack thing you got going on-”  
“Luis,” Steve whines softly.  
“Oh. Oh!” Luis mimes sealing his mouth shut with a nail. It’s a little too vivid for Steve’s comfort. “Discretion, absolutely. Not a word, I promise, this shit is just between you and me.”  
Steve purses his lips and gives Luis a brief nod, then holds out his hand for the nails. Luis drops them into his palm, and bounces around excitedly as Steve spreads them out on the deck and picks up his hammer.  
“I hope you guys figure it out,” Luis says quickly. “You deserve to be happy, you know that right?”  
Steve draws in a sharp breath, and picks out a nail, hammering the timber in place.

By late afternoon Steve has enough firewood to keep him warm until judgement day, and a porch that he can walk across without putting a foot through.   
The guys pack up and wish him good evening before heading back up the trail, Luis cradling the picture Steve had painted to hang up in Borracho. It’s not his best work, as far as Steve is concerned, but Luis loved the bold design and dense blocks of colours, hugging the canvas so tightly Steve was worried the frame would crack.  
He gives a last wave as they disappear from view, and takes a walk around the property, picking up stray tools and half-empty mugs of coffee as he goes. Luis has nailed down the loose boards over the crawl space under the cabin, replacing the broken ones with fresh timbers, and Steve only feels a slight pinch of guilt as he takes his claw hammer and pulls out the new nails, and tucks them into his pocket. He checks that the boards are loose enough to push aside, and takes the mugs inside to wash up.

There is an itch under his skin, a restiveness.  
He spends an hour chopping wood, swinging his axe until his shoulders ache, but he still shivers with tension when he finally stops, shaking too hard to risk raising the axe again.   
He stacks the logs against the back wall of the cabin, his arms aching, his shoulders protesting every time he picks up another armful of wood. Scott swears on stacking firewood bark side up, while Sam swears just as blindly that the bark should be facing down. Luis just shrugs and stacks it however it comes, and that is the method that Steve adopts.   
Steve brings some of the seasoned wood from last month indoors, piling it up by the fireplace. Sam had warned of a coming frost, and Steve sweeps out the grate and builds a fire. He takes the ashes out to the vegetable patch and scatters it over the dirt, dusting the pale green shoots of garlic and onion with grey.  
There is a prickling in his fingertips, a trickle down his spine. Every cold breath of air from the lake raises goosebumps on his bare arms.   
Steve takes one last look at the still waters, and goes inside.  
He checks the fire, raking through the embers and adding more wood, and decides to take a shower.

The bathroom is cramped, and the shower spits rather than sprays, but Steve strips off, tossing his clothes into the corner, and ducks his head under the trickle, twisting the taps until the water is as hot as he can stand.  
He can hear the click and rumble of the boiler as he scrubs soap into his hair, rinsing away the sweat and sawdust from a long day, and rests his head against the tiled wall. Water soaks into his beard, trickling into the corners of his mouth. He braces one hand against the wall as he wraps the other around his cock.  
It twitches in his hand, half-hard already and thickening in his grip. He screws his eyes shut, and tries not to think about anything but the feel of it, the callouses that have formed on his hands, the way they catch and drag.   
An image floats into his thoughts, unbidden and unwanted (though that is a lie, he can admit). Eyes that sparkle like sunlight on water, a mouth stretched wide with silent amusement.  
Steve lets out a low, stuttering breath, and pumps his fist. His cock twitches and stiffens, and he curls his hand over the head, moving in slow circles, precome smearing across his palm.  
It’s too much, it’s not enough, and Steve whines in frustration. He reaches up onto the shelf, fumbling through the bottles scattered there until his hand closes around a jar of vaseline. He snaps off the lid and pushes his fingers into the thick gel and knocking the jar into the bathtub, clumsy in his desperation.  
Steve is in no mood to tease himself, or draw things out any longer than he has to. He slides a slick finger down the cleft of his ass, nudging against the tight pucker of his hole, and exhales slowly as he pushes his way in.  
He clenches around the intrusion, his calf muscles twitching, his knees threatening to give way. His breath comes in short, pained gasps as he presses his forehead to the tiles, slick with condensation, and tries to relax. He thinks of the curve of moon-pale shoulders. Of a sharp-toothed smile.  
His body finally relents, and he eases in a little further, cupping the heel of his hand against the base of his spine as he works in a second finger. It’s a little rough, a little fast, and the orgasm, when it hits, feels like a punch in the gut.  
He spills on the white tiles, the cooling water washing the evidence away.

The fire is still burning when he shuffles out of the bathroom, wrapped in his bathrobe. He feels unsteady, stumbling over his own feet as he pads into the kitchen and fills the kettle, clicking on the gas hob and setting it over the heat.  
He dresses while he waits for the water to boil, pulling on a warm sweater and rolling up the sleeves, and makes a cup of coffee.  
It’s still light enough to see outside, and through the window the first stars are appearing, their pinpricks of light reflecting on the still surface of the lake.  
Steve shivers, though his back is warmed by the fire, and hopes wherever Bucky is, he’s warm and safe.  
He pushes the thought aside as he switches on the solar lanterns, bathing the desk in soft light and sets out his pens. He turns away from the window, shifting around his papers on the desk, and tries to focus on work.   
He’s still sore from the day's work, and his already aching shoulders cramp up from hunching over his desk. He gives up, tossing the pen across the room in irritation, and goes to bed.  
To hell with it all, he’ll try again in the morning.

Steve wakes up in a tangle of blankets, briefly disoriented, and sits up. His shoulders twinge, and he rubs the back of his neck absently, looking at the window. It’s dark out, the trees outside stark silhouettes against the star-speckled sky. There are fronds of ice tracing across the windowpane.  
What woke him? Steve pulls the blankets around himself and scratches his cheek, his nails rasping against the soft bristles.  
There is a soft sound from under the floorboard. An indrawn breath, a heavy weight dragging through the dirt, and Steve freezes.   
The movement continues, and he tracks the sound from the far wall to the center of the room. A low susurration, a soft breath, and a silent pause before it moves again.  
It sounds pained. Exhausted.  
“Bucky?” Steve calls.  
The cabin falls silent, and Steve holds his breath, listening. He can almost feel it, a charge in the air, like the moments when he had looked out at the silent lake and known someone was looking back.  
Steve curses softly and climbs out of bed, wrapping his quilt around him and stomping out to the main room. He pauses to check on the fire, and throws on a couple of logs before stamping over to the door, smacking his heels down on the boards a couple more times for good measure before unlocking it and throwing it open.  
There is frost on the porch, fine crystals of ice that chill his bare feet.  
“Bucky?” Steve shouts, wrapping his quilt more tightly around himself. “It’s freezing out here.”  
There is no answer, and he looks down at the lake. The long grass is crusted with ice, but for a swathe that leads from the black water to the cabin.  
“Come inside,” Steve insists. “You can sleep on the couch.”  
Bucky still doesn’t answer, and his offer is met with silence. It’s too damn cold to hang around, and Steve retreats into the cabin.  
“I’m leaving the door unlocked,” he shouts. “Come in when you’re done freezing your ass off.”  
He pulls the door closed, and walks over to the fire to warm his feet before going back to bed.

Steve is almost asleep, bundled up in his blankets, when he hears the door click open. He raises his head slowly, and listens to the soft, damp sounds of Bucky moving through the cabin, the muted thump of the door being pushed shut.  
He moves with the same slow, heavy gait inside the cabin as he does underneath it, the slow shifts and long pauses, as though dragging a heavy weight, and stops at the bedroom door.  
Steve waits, his heart beating in his throat, for whatever comes next. For Bucky to push the door open and stand in the doorway, his pale form lit by firelight. For him to turn away, and spend the night on the couch instead.  
If he listens hard, his eyes screwed shut, he can hear a light rasp of skin brushing against the solid pine door, as if fingers were being drawn across the wood, following the whorls and patterns in the grain. The door handle shifts slightly, as if grasped in uncertainty and released, and Bucky slowly retreats.  
It hurts, a physical pain deep under his ribs, and Steve lets out a sharp little gasp. He curls up in his blankets, as if he could make himself smaller.  
It doesn’t mean anything, he tells himself. None of it means a thing.  
Bucky doesn’t move far, Steve can hear the rasp of his hands moving over the wood panelled wall towards the bathroom. In the dark the sound seems to multiply, spreading out up the wall and across the floor, tapping against the ceiling and scratching along the floor. He hears the faint a click of the bathroom door, and sits up, pushing back the covers.   
There is a soft clatter of the plug falling into the bathtub, and a faucet being turned.   
Steve cocks his head and listens for the sound of the boiler clicking on, the heavy _thwum_ of gas igniting and the pock and thrum of water running through the pipes, but he can only hear the rush of cold water.   
There is a oddly sinuous sound, something he can’t place, and a ripple of water as Bucky slips into the bath with a low sound of relief.  
Steve lies back down, pulling the blankets around himself again. He listens to the trickle and splash of water on the other side of the wall, the corner of his mouth twitching up when he hears a soft, low-pitched hum. The tune is unfamiliar, a simple little refrain that circles around, chasing its own tail, and lulls him to sleep.

In the morning, Steve wakes to an empty cabin.   
There is a tide mark in the bathtub, a faint line of dirt that Steve rinses away with the showerhead, and a lingering scent of mint shower gel.   
The thought of Bucky working Steve’s soap through his hair, curling dark tresses around his fingers as he massages his scalp, stays with Steve for the rest of the morning. It scratches along his spine, twists around in his stomach. His hands clench and unclench, as though his fingers ache.  
He is not ready to call it what it is.  
There is mud on the steps leading up to the porch, dry and flaking, when Steve ventures outside, the frost already melting away with the morning.  
He takes his coffee down to the deck, and sits with the lake a while, the cold air sharp and refreshing.  
He is happy.  
It cannot last.

After the cold snap, the weather turns warmer again. It’s too nice a day to spend indoors working, so Steve sprawls in the long grass with his oil pastels and papers to sketch the changing leaves. The frost has tinged the maple leaves red, and Steve tries to capture the riot of colour, the soft haze of russet and gold against the crisp needles of the evergreens.  
He is lost in his work, his bare toes digging into the dirt, pastels scattered in the grass around him, when he hears someone coming down the trail towards the cabin. He pays it no mind, Sam has a habit of showing up unannounced to see if he’s still in one piece, and he wouldn’t put it past Nat to show up at least once before the snow sets in.  
He picks up the black pastel and starts working on the shading, humming a simple little melody that loops round and around.  
“There you are.”  
Steve scrambles to his feet, picture forgotten, as a familiar figure comes striding down the trail towards the cabin. Tall and muscular, his dark hair shorn close to his scalp. He stops and takes a look around, his gaze lingering on the cabin.   
There is a sharp snap, and the pastel in Steve’s hand cracks in two, and drops from his numb fingers.  
The man smiles, sharp and bright like the edge of a blade. “So this is where you’ve been hiding out.”  
“Brock,” Steve’s voice is barely audible.  
“Alright,” Brock makes a show of glancing back at the trail, but doesn’t let Steve out of his sight. “Come on, get your shit together. You got five minutes.”  
Steve glances around, quick and furtive. Where is his axe? Out back by the chopping block?   
Brock ambles towards the cabin, his hands clasped behind his back.  
The lake. He could dive into the lake, swim across and go… where?   
“Come on, chop chop.” Brock claps his hands, and Steve flinches.  
“I’m not going,” Steve says, a tremor in his voice.   
Brock’s twisted smile drops. “You got any idea how much time I’ve wasted looking for you?”  
“I said I’m not going,” Steve repeats a little louder.  
“Oh, you're not?” Brock licks his lips. “We’ll see about that.”  
“Go home, Brock,” Steve takes a careful step back. “It’s over.”  
Brock snarls. “It's over when I say it is.”

Brock stalks forward, and Steve bolts, taking off through the trees.  
He forces his way through the dense thicket, pushing towards the trail that leads up to the cliff. Branches snap underfoot, thorns digging into his bare feet as the trees snatch at his face. They snag his sweater, tearing holes in the knit when he wrenches free.  
“Get back here, bitch!” Brock roars, and Steve scrambles over a fallen log, stumbling but keeping on his feet.  
There is an iron band wrapped around his chest, cinched tighter with every step he takes. He can’t breathe, clenching his jaw until his teeth ache. Brock yells again, closer this time, and Steve scrabbles about in the leaf litter for a rock, for a branch, for anything.  
Brock barrels into him, knocking him to the ground. Steve grabs a handful of dirt and rolls onto his back, throwing his handful of grit and pine needles in Brock's face. He recoils, and Steve punches him, his closed fist connecting with Brock’s jaw.  
There is a crunch of teeth against his knuckles, and Brock stumbles back, wiping a thin trickle of blood from his lip.  
Steve twists onto his front, moving forward on his hands and knees before wrapping his hand around a branch and pulling himself to his feet. He’s too slow, to panicked, and Brock is on him again.  
He grabs Steve by the back of his sweater, tearing the neckline, and kicks the back of his knee.  
Steve yelps, a sharp, high sound that echoes through the trees, and drops to the ground. Brock punches him in the ribs, vicious little jabs that knock him senseless, and Steve lashes out, driving his heel into Brock’s ankle. He catches the bone and kicks out again, and Brock curses, twisting away.  
Steve is on his feet again, pressing his hand to his aching ribs as he stumbles away. The trees rustle overhead as he pushes through them.

Steve has no idea where he is, all he can see in every direction are trees, reaching up to the sky. His ears are pounding, a staccato beat in time with his rabbit-fast heart, drowning out the shaking around him.  
Brock grabs him by the throat, and Steve grabs his arm, digging his fingers into his wrist, into the corded muscles of his forearm, and feels skin tear under his nails.  
There are spots of bright light dancing in the corners of his eyes, stark against the dark red blur creeping across his vision. He opens his mouth, but no sound comes out.  
Something is moving through the trees above them, flashing red and black amongst the green and gold leaves. It drops to the ground like a stone, vast and many limbed and blurring with the trees. A serpentine form whips out from the mass, long and sleek, and wraps loosely around Brock's neck.  
Brock’s grip on Steve loosens, and he looks down at the thing coiled around him.  
“Snake,” he stutters, scrabbling at the thick coils looped around him. “Fucking snake.”  
Steve drops to the dirt, edging away until his back hits the base of a tree.   
The mass uncurls, its colours shifting from red to black and back again.   
The thing tightening around Brock doesn’t look like a snake. The end tapers to a smooth point, twisting in his grip as he tries to pull himself free.  
Steve stares past Brock at the writhing shape behind him. Long, dark tentacles, stained with red, wind through the air, wrapping around Brock’s shoulders, around his waist.  
There is a glimpse of skin, moon-pale among the coils. Dark hair curling around his shoulders. Blue eyes that shine like sunlight on water.  
Steve remembers the sound of a weight being dragged along the crawlspace under the cabin, heavy and sinuous. The drag marks that every morning led from the beach to the door of his cabin.   
“Bucky?”

Brock turns slowly, following Steve’s line of sight, and comes face to face with the ghost.  
Bucky bares his teeth, and lets out a low hiss. Brock’s mouth drops open, and the tentacle in his slackening hands rears up and punches into his open mouth, bursting through the back of his head and spraying blood and grey matter in a narrow arc through the trees.  
Brock shudders, his body twitching and spasming. There is a muffled, high whine seeping from his mouth as the tentacle twists back and forth, and snaps back.  
He rocks back on his heels, blood spilling from his open mouth, and stares dumbly as Bucky tightens the coils wrapped around him. Brock’s ribs crack and splinter, and Bucky twists his limbs, tearing him in two.  
Brock’s legs roll away down the slope, and are lost in the leaf litter. Bucky drops the rest of him in a heap at Steve’s feet, his intestines spilling across the forest floor. Brock twitches and spasms, staring sightlessly at the trees, and falls still.

Steve watches, numb and shaking, as Bucky moves away from the body. He lifts each tentacle with infinite care, gathering them close, and slowly crawls along the forest floor.  
It is like watching the world through a thick pane of glass, and Steve notes with an odd detachment how the tentacles splay out from his hips, smooth and sleek and black, speckled with white. Bucky doesn’t walk on them, doesn’t lift himself up and skitter like a spider, but drags himself along, digging his fingers into the dirt and pulling himself forwards.  
There is an odd, low sound in Steve’s ears, a keening, rising in pitch and volume as Bucky crawls towards him, blood spattering his pale skin.  
“Shh,” Bucky murmurs, and Steve realises the sound is coming from him.  
He swallows, sharp and painful, and the tip of a tentacle brushes against his bare foot. Bucky inches closer, his tentacles reaching out, each one a mottled grey-green as they touch lightly at the holes in Steve’s sweater, at the blood seeping from the scratches on his arms.  
Bucky lifts up his hand, black earth gathered under his fingernails, in the creases between his fingers, and brushes his palm against Steve’s bruised throat.  
Steve screws his eyes shut, tears spilling down his cheeks, and a sob forces its way out of his mouth.  
Bucky snatches his hand away, and Steve sucks in a ragged breath.   
It burns its way out his throat like acid, like bile, and Steve can’t even moan, his breath coming in painful hiccoughs, his mouth filled with hot coals.  
He draws his knees up to his chest, curling in on himself, and lets his heart shatter.

When Steve can finally bear to raise his head again, he is alone.  
There is no body left at his feet, blood and viscera soaking into the earth, nor any sign there ever was one.  
That isn’t true. Steve rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand. There’s a dark circle on the ground where the body had been, rust-coloured patches of colour stain the leaves and branches of the trees.  
There is no sign of Bucky.  
Steve swallows, and lets out a quiet groan. His throat aches from when Brock had grabbed him. His ribs protest as he struggles to his feet, though they don’t feel broken.  
He closes his eyes, and an image comes to him. A dirt-crusted hand cradling his cheek, a low voice murmuring reassurances. The image shifts to Brock’s clouded eyes staring up at the sky, blood filling his slack mouth.  
Steve knuckles at his eyes, forcing the visions away, and limps through the forest. He follows the path of broken branches and trampled dirt back down to the cabin. 

He drinks a glass of water at the kitchen sink, rummaging through the drawers for aspirin. His hands tremble as he shakes out the pills, scattering them on the floor. Steve leaves them where they fall, tipping a couple more into his hand and swallowing them dry.   
He goes into the bathroom and washes his face, before looking in the mirror with an unpleasant sense of deja vu.  
The sweater Nat had picked out for him is in rags, torn everywhere from the neck to the hem. His throat is dark red, turning to purple.  
He should be dead.  
Steve touches the smudge of dirt on his chin, and remembers the feel of Bucky’s thumb, cautious and tender.  
He should be dead. And a monster had dropped down from the trees and. And.  
Steve cups his hand against his throat. There had been a monster in the forest, but it wasn’t Bucky.  
He sits down on the edge of bath, and pushes his fingers into his mouth, trying to force the sounds he is making back down his throat.  
Brock’s gone. Steve swallows and swallows and chokes down his relief. At last. At last.  
He’s gone.

Steve pulls on his boots and walks slowly down the steps to the lake.   
The water looks no different, silent and still, and he wraps his arms around himself as he makes his way down to the deck.  
Bucky had torn Brock in half, ripped him apart like a rag doll. And then he had crawled across the forest floor and lay down at Steve’s side, tried to offer him comfort. And Steve had recoiled from him, from the blood and the tentacles. Had looked at him, the truth of him, and seen a monster.  
“Bucky?” His voice is a hoarse whisper. He coughs and clears his throat. “Bucky?” he tries again, but he can barely hear himself over the wind in the trees.  
Steve rubs his neck and scans the lake, searching for any sign of him, but can see nothing.   
He turns away and walks slowly up the trail towards the road, his ribs aching with every step. He finds Brock’s SUV parked down the road, and crosses over to it.  
He checks that there’s nothing coming either direction, and picks up a rock. It takes a couple of blows to smash the driver side window in, and Steve unlocks the door and climbs in. He checks behind the sun visor, and finds the spare set of keys, slotting them into the ignition and turning on the engine.   
He drives south, counting off the miles, until he reaches a dirt track that leads to Upper Saranac lake, and follows it to the water’s edge. Steve leaves the engine running, and climbs out of the car, checking that there are no witnesses around, and pushes the vehicle down the slope and into the lake.  
Steve follows the vehicle into the shallows, water pouring into his boots, and watches the current pull it under. There will be snow soon enough, and the lake will freeze over until spring.  
Steve climbs back onto the shore, and starts walking home.

Bucky isn’t there.   
It’s dark by the time he gets back to the trail, and he stumbles along the path, working more by memory that sight, until he reaches the cabin.  
The waning moon is reflected in the surface of the lake, and the forest is silent. It is not the watchful silence that he has come to know, but something empty, something lost.  
Steve kicks off his boots and leaves them on the porch, taking one last look around the clearing.  
“Bucky?”  
The trees do not answer him. He slips inside, stripping off his ruined sweater and throwing it in the corner. He turns on the solar lanterns, and stumbles into his room, cold and damp and alone.   
He curls up in his blankets, too exhausted to sleep, and listens to the wind rustling through the trees outside.  
There is no dull thump and slither of something moving under the floor. No one comes to his bedroom door.   
Steve listens to the silence, and hopes that wherever Bucky is, he can see the lanterns in the window, that they will call him home.

“Scott?”  
Scott looks up from his listings, his office phone wedged between his shoulder and his ear, and sees Steve standing in the doorway.  
“Hey, come in,” He waves Steve into the office, shifting his phone to his other ear. “Just give me a second, I gotta sort this out.”  
Steve nods, and wanders over to the waiting area, picking up the local paper and flicking through it while Scott finishes his call.  
“And we’re done,” Scott sets the phone back in it’s cradle. “What can I do for you? You’re not thinking of selling, are you?”  
“No, nothing like that.” Steve shakes his head. “I had a question, thought you might be able to help.”  
Scott leans back in his chair. “Sure, knock yourself out.”  
Steve folds up the newspaper and drops it on the chair. “I need all the lakes and bodies of water within three days walk of the cabin.”  
Scott sits up straight, frowning to himself. “Well, that’s a weird one.” He opens his desk drawer and starts rummaging through it, pulling out a map.  
“But you can help?” Steve pushes.  
“Oh sure.” Scott unfolds the map and spreads it out across the desk, tracing along the roads until he finds Steve’s lake.   
The map is more blue than green, lakes and pools and rivers, their edges meandering across the page like so much spilled ink.  
“Okay, so you’ve got Upper Saranac Lake directly east. That’s about eight miles long but the shoreline is more like forty, what with the…” he twists his hand back and forth to denote the wandering shoreline. “Then there’s Middle Saranac, which is only three miles long, and after that Lower Saranac, which is maybe six miles?”  
Scott shifts the map around, and takes a look at the land to the west of the cabin. Steve can see more than a dozen lakes and pools many times the size of his own within thirty miles of the cabin, all surrounded by dense forest. There are no roads leading out that way, he’ll have to go on foot.  
“So, you planning on a camping trip?” Scott asks. “Touring the lakes?”  
“Something like that.” Steve bites the inside of his cheek. “Can I borrow this?”  
“Yeah, sure,” Scott looks perplexed as Steve folds up the map and tucks it into his pocket.   
He needs supplies, a sleeping bag and hiking boots.   
Steve claps Scott on the shoulder and mutters a quick thanks, heading out the door before he has a chance to answer.

Steve doesn’t go home. He parks his bike several miles north of his usual spot, hidden behind a stand of trees. Strapped to the bike is a rucksack filled with enough to last him three days and a lightweight sleeping bag. He straps the pack onto his shoulders, and starts walking north.  
Upper Saranac is to his left, cabins dotted along its winding shoreline. He turns right, following a track through the woods for a handful of miles until he reaches the first lake.   
He sits down by the shore to rest, easing his bag off his shoulders and pulling a bottle of water out of a side pocket.  
There is a sketchbook tucked inside his bag, and he digs it out, opening it to the first page and smoothing his hand across the clean white sheet.  
He had thought of writing a letter at first, picking over the words to say as he walked through the woods. But nothing felt right, the jumble of his thoughts too tangled to put into words, so he draws it instead.  
He sketches a cabin on the edge of a lake, the door cracked open, and tears the sheet out of his book. He folds it into a little boat, and places it carefully on the lake.  
It bobs up and down, floating away across the water, and Steve packs up his bag, swinging it onto his shoulders with a soft grunt as his ribs protest.  
He crosses the lake off his map, and follows the trail north.

Every lake he finds, every pool and every pond he walks to, he does the same thing. He sits by the shore and rests his tired feet, staying only long enough to draw a picture.  
He draws a cup of coffee, a brown trout, a rowboat idling in the water. They are not the things he wants to say, but he sends them anyway, watching the little paper boats twist in the wind.  
He draws his own hands, his knuckles skinned and bruised. He draws a dirt smeared thumb caressing his jaw, the corner of his mouth crooked up. He draws a sleek, black tentacle curled around his wrist.   
He makes them into boats, his love letters, and sends them across the water, one by one.  
 _Come back_.  
Steve picks up his rucksack, and makes his way south.  
 _Come back to me_.

Steve picks his way through the forest, moving north again, until he reaches the road. He should follow it east towards Upper Saranac, fetch his bike from its hiding place, but he’s tired and heartsick, and turns his feet towards home.  
The cabin is the same as he left it, silent and empty. He climbs up the steps and drops his backpack on the porch, stripping off his coat and draping it over the rail. He kicks off his hiking boots, watching them tumble and clatter across the wooden boards, and goes inside to make some coffee.  
He moves automatically, without thinking. Water in kettle, kettle on stove, a spoonful of coffee in a mug while it steams and whistles.  
He walks down to the deck with his cup cradled in his hands, the long grass tickling his bare feet, and looks out over the lake.  
There is something crumpled up on the beach, sodden and mud stained, like a balled up napkin. Steve stares at it for a long moment. An odd little thing, incongruous. It doesn’t belong among the grass and the dirt.  
Steve sets his mug down on the boards, and walks down to the beach, his feet sinking into the damp earth. He picks up the crumple of paper, turning it around in his hands. Water drips through his fingers, and he opens out the page. He has to work carefully, the wet paper tears so easily.  
The pencil marks are still clear, even under the mud. A hand cupped against the firm line of a jaw, thumb pressed to the corner of a wide, crooked smile.  
Steve looks out at the lake, and sees movement in the water, a little way beyond the shore. The deep ripple of something swimming under the surface.

Steve lets the picture fall. He’s tired, his body aches, but he picks up his feet and runs.   
The water is cold, shockingly cold, as it laps around his feet, and he splashes his way through the shallows, slipping in the mud. He doesn’t slow down, doesn’t stop, crashing through the water as it rises up past his knees.  
He isn’t sleek and silent like Bucky, he doesn’t move through the lake with agile grace. With every step the water froths and churns around him, stirring up mud and debris. Up ahead a dark shape rises up, black hair curling around pale shoulders.  
Bucky.  
Tentacles spread out around him, shifting between speckled black and mossy green, sculling back and forth below the surface. Steve lets out a wordless yell and staggers forward, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s shoulders.  
“You came back,” Steve buries his face in Bucky’s tangled hair. “You came back.”  
Bucky falters, his hands hovering at his sides, as Steve clings to him. His skin is cold and smooth, warming quickly in Steve’s arms. He smells of damp, rich soil, of pale green shoots growing under the frozen earth. Slowly, inch by hopeful inch, Bucky reaches up and brushes his fingers against Steve’s sides, dragging across the wet cotton of his t-shirt.  
“I thought I lost you,” Steve whispers, and Bucky gathers him up in his arms and crushes their bodies together.  
“Steve,” Bucky murmurs, and his arms are not enough to hold. One by one his tentacles wrap around them both, curling around Steve’s waist, stroking across the bruises on his ribs, the marks lingering on his throat.

There are gills tucked behind Bucky’s ear. Whenever Steve’s breath gusts across them they flutter, delicate as a moth’s wing, and Bucky shivers. When Steve presses his mouth to them Bucky moans, a sharp, startled sound that he would never tire of hearing. Steve threads his fingers through Bucky’s hair, combing back the stray tresses that cover his face, and kisses him.  
Steve presses kiss after kiss on Bucky’s lips, though he does not return them, only tilts his head, silent and curious. When Steve pushes a thumb into the corner of his mouth, Bucky opens to him, starting at the slick of tongue against his mismatched teeth and laughing at himself for his flinching.  
Bucky’s mouth tastes sweeter when he laughs, when he finally kisses Steve back.  
There is something predatory in the way Bucky kisses, a tease and a lure and a sharp pinch of teeth. He plucks at Steve’s shirt, winding his hands under the soaking cloth and savouring the touch of his bare skin, the shirt bunching up as he works his way up to Steve’s shoulders.  
A tentacle grabs hold of the shirt and pulls impatiently, and Steve chuckles softly, pausing long enough to shrug off the shirt. Bucky’s hands and limbs tug at it, as if the idea of clothes in general is offensive, and casts the bundle aside.   
It should be strange, it should be terrifying, the way the tentacles, flashing green and umber, wind around Steve’s arms. How the pointed tips push under the waistband of his jeans and trace across his stomach. But their touch is gentle, reverent, and Bucky’s kisses tastes like molasses, deep and bitter and sweet. 

Bucky grips the waistband of Steve’s jeans and pushes them down his hips. His tentacles wrap around Steve’s thighs, working his clothes off inch by inch. They brush against Steve’s cock, curling delicately around his length, and Steve gasps into Bucky’s mouth. He rocks his hips, tightening his arms around Bucky’s shoulders and moaning low as they twist along the shaft, flexing and releasing in rippling waves.   
Steve pulls back, gasping for breath, and reaches down between them. He takes hold of one of the tentacles and gives the slightest tug. They loosen and twist away, slicking along his stomach, between his thighs.  
“Too much?” Bucky’s voice is barely audible, a sonorous thrum that Steve can feel in his sternum.   
He shakes his head, sliding his thumb along the one still curling in his hand. It writhes under his touch, and Bucky’s breath catches behind his teeth.  
“Good?” Steve asks, and Bucky nods, screwing his eyes shut.  
Steve strokes along the tentacle's length, feeling the weight of it, slick and smooth in his hands. It turns rosey where he drags his knuckles along the skin, darker where he presses his thumb.  
“Can you…” Steve hesitates, curling the palm of his hand over the pointed tip. “I mean, can we…”  
Bucky bites his lip, his cheeks staining coral, and turns away, pulling his tentacle out of Steve’s hand.  
Steve lets it slips away, and opens his mouth to apologise. Bucky shakes his head, still unable to meet his eye, and takes hold of his wrist, pushing it down into the water.  
The tentacles are thicker close to his body, sleek and firm as Bucky pushes Steve’s hand between them. There in the center is another, shorter and slimmer, and Bucky pushes Steve’s hand against it.  
It feels denser than the others, warmer. It twitches and flexes against Steve’s hand, and Bucky lets out a broken sound when Steve closes his fist around it and slowly pulls.  
It feels no different to the times when Steve has handled himself, alone in the dark, and he touches Bucky the way he likes to be touched. Long, slow strokes, his fingertips teasing along the underside.  
Bucky clutches Steve’s hips, tentacles squirming and thrashing in the water around them, and hides his face in Steve’s shoulder. He presses his teeth to warm skin, champing in frustration, but doesn’t bite down.  
Steve draws his thumb across the tip, spreading the beads of pearly fluid that gather there, thick and slippery.

“Bucky?” Steve whispers. “Do you want to… Do you want me?”  
Bucky doesn’t hesitate, or leave Steve in any doubt. He surges up, wrapping his tentacles around Steve in an implacable grip and kisses him, hard and sharp-edged. His teeth scrape along Steve’s tongue, a copper tang of blood amidst the burnt sugar of his lips.  
A tentacle loops around Steve’s thigh, pulling his knees apart. He shifts in Bucky’s grip, arms wound around his neck, and presses their bodies together from open mouths to splayed hips. He rubs his cock, hard and leaking, against Bucky’s stomach, his hips twitching erratically.  
Bucky’s cock brushes between his thighs, feeling its way up, dexterous and prehensile. He closes his eyes, his breath coming in pained little bursts across Steve’s cheek.  
“Come on,” Steve gasps, holding him tighter. “I got you. Come on.”  
It slips between the cleft of his ass, and rubs against his hole. Steve chokes back a moan as it brushes back and forth, nudging at the tight ring of muscle and pushing its way it.  
Steve clenches around the intrusion, and Bucky nudges their mouths together in something that isn’t a kiss, but a sharing of breath. It feel far more intimate than kissing, taking Bucky’s air into his lungs, taking Bucky’s flesh into his body. Steve relaxes, little by little, as Bucky thrusts in and withdraws, filling him up inch by slick, heated inch.

There is a sharp edge of pain, fine as a blade, and it’s enough to make Steve hiss.   
Bucky tenses and starts to withdraw, but Steve digs his fingers into the muscle of Bucky’s shoulder.  
“No,” he begs. “Don’t stop.”  
Bucky doesn’t pull out any further, but doesn’t slide back in. “Steve.”   
He could swear that he can’t hear Bucky’s voice anymore, but feel it thrum through his clavicle. A deep, bass note that rattles through his bones and echoes under his ribs.  
“I like it.” Steve curls his fingers through Bucky’s hair, and looks into his shattered-glass eyes. “I like it.”  
The tentacles wrapped around Steve turn wine-red, and Bucky’s eyes darken. He pulls Steve into a kiss, hard enough to bruise, and thrusts into him. Steve bears down on him, pouring every gasp and moan and curse into his mouth, and Bucky swallows them all, gathering them up in his chest like hoarded treasure.  
Steve shudders out a moan, overwhelmed by how full he is. Every inch of Bucky’s cock drags against his prostate, smooth and sleek and relentless. He’s barely even thrusting, just a gentle, rhythmic motion back and forth that sparks flames up Steve’s spine. He shivers with it all, tremors dancing under his skin, rippling through his muscles, and his cock leaks a sticky trail of semen across Bucky’s stomach.  
Bucky murmurs softly, and Steve can barely understand him. He nips at Bucky’s lips when he speaks, as if he could taste the words, and makes out the shape of his own name.  
Bucky shudders, his tentacles contracting around Steve in a coruscation of light and colors. His cock swells and pulses inside Steve as he comes, sudden and sweet. Steve thrusts against him, spilling across his stomach, and Bucky kisses his own name from Steve’s lips, again and again.

Hidden among the reeds on the far side of the lake is an inlet. Moss grows in a dense carpet leading down to the water, and rocks and branches have been stacked up along the shore, forming a shelter. Ferns grow between the piled stones, sunlight filtering through their lush green leaves.  
Bucky lays Steve down on the soft moss and winds around him. His tentacles thread between Steve’s legs, twist around his waist, cradling him in colors of earth and grass and sky.  
Steve combs his fingers through Bucky’s hair, teasing out tangles and tucking loose strands behind his ears. With every stroke he brushes the tips of his fingers against his gills, light and teasing, and Bucky squirms, his laughter muffled against the curve of Steve’s shoulder.  
Steve finally relents, smoothing his palms down the curve of Bucky’s spine, pausing to press his thumbs to the dimples at his hips. The tentacle wrapped around his middle flexes when he draws his thumb across it, shudders when he traces his fingers along the smooth underside. Their mottled patterns shift and change under Steve’s hands, the edges where one of them ends and the other begins shifting and ill-defined.  
Bucky mouths at the bruises at Steve’s throat, as though they could be unmade with his lips, and scrapes his fingers through the bristles of his beard.  
His kisses taste like rich, damp earth, like spring.

“Come on, Rogers. Give me a hand with this damn thing!” Sam starts yelling before he’s in sight of the cabin.  
He leans against his hand truck and waits for Steve to appear, raising his eyebrows when he finally shows up, soaking wet and still pulling on a sweater.  
“Sorry, were you in the shower?” Sam asks.  
Steve is a little red-faced and out of breath. He shrugs, pulling at his sweater where it clings to his wet skin. “Something like that.”  
Sam pats the generator strapped to the hand truck. “Here’s the jenny you ordered. Don’t say thank you or nothin’. Not like I got shit to be doing.”  
“Thanks Sam,” Steve says sincerely. “I really appreciate you bringing it all this way.”  
“Damn right you do,” Sam grins, and takes a pointed step back from the barrow, gesturing for Steve to take over.  
“I owe you so much beer,” Steve adds, tilting and wheeling it down the trail to the cabin.  
Sam ambles along after him, taking in the surroundings. Steve has done a fair bit of work on the place since he last came by, even going so far as extending the porch around the rest of the cabin.   
“This is new,” he remarks as Steve pulls the generator up to the back of the cabin. There’s a new door fitted that leads to the bedroom, and steps down to a deck where a large wooden tub stands.  
“Yeah, I’ve been busy,” Steve positions the generator by the tub. “Want to get it finished before the lake freezes.”  
Sam peers into the tub. It’s maybe three feet high and lined with thick, moulded plastic. “Is this a hot tub?”  
Steve flushes and shakes his head. “No, not really. It’s… uh…” He scratches the back of his neck. “It’s Bucky’s.”  
Sam crosses his arms and makes a querying noise. “And who the hell is Bucky?”

Steve puts his hands on his hips and sucks in a breath. He seems to be steeling himself for something.  
“He’s my partner.”  
“What?” Sam asks.  
The look Steve gives him makes Sam’s mouth snap shut. Oh. _That_ kind of partner.  
“Is that a problem?” There is a hard edge to Steve’s voice that Sam hasn’t heard before.  
“No,” Sam says quickly, shaking his head. “Hell, no. Love is love, right?”  
Steve’s expression softens, and he gives Sam a gentle pat on the shoulder. “Come on, I’ll make us some coffee.”  
Sam follows Steve inside, and takes a wander around the main room while Steve fills up the kettle and sets out three cups. There are pictures tacked up on the wall, sketches of the cabin and the lake, and several portraits of the same man.  
There is something in the sketches, some tenderness in the lines that catches Sam’s attention   
“This your boy, then?” He taps one of the pictures and gives Steve a sly grin.  
Steve glances over and nods proudly. “Yeah, that’s him. He’s outside if you want to come meet him?”   
“Cute,” Sam declares, and Steve chuckles. “He local?”  
Steve shakes his head and hands Sam coffee. “He’s from the Pacific.”  
“Huh,” it’s an odd thing to say. “Long way from home.”  
“No,” Steve smiles, broad and bright. It looks good on him. “He’s not.”

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt by [Mari_Knickerbocker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mari_Knickerbocker/pseuds/Mari_Knickerbocker)  
> Cosmic horror. non-con, crack Tentacle monster Bucky, Post-serum Steve, modern au: no powers, haunted lake/lone cabin in the woods, abusive/criminal ex, Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes, past Steve Rogers/(you pick) rating can be explicit (feel free to use any Marvel character in addition to Steve & Bucky)
> 
> Growing tired of life in the fast lane Steve leaves NYC for the mostly untouched wilderness of the Adirondack mountains where he proceeds to embrace the lumberjack life and living off of the land. He settles in a cabin that’s seen better days but had been built near one of the many hidden lakes found in the national park. Many of the locals have warned him off of buying the place with stories about what happened to its last inhabitants and rumors about that lake being haunted. Steve ignores the warnings and goes about repairing the place and as summer tapers off into autumn he slowly becomes aware of something - someone - watching him. Trying to play it off as paranoia, or adjusting to living out in nature and its stillness/different ambient noises, Steve pays it no mind. This feeling grows and he gradually starts to notice that things he’s left out have been tampered with. Like the sawhorse with the planks he’s been cutting for a deck extension has been knocked over, tools have been rearranged, the garden he had staked out in anticipation of the spring has been trampled. He sees drag marks in the sand of his little private beach and starts to dream of a wriggling black mass of limbs with a man's face/torso in the center of it; he feels compelled to draw his dreams. All the while the lake is unnaturally still like the water is holding its breath and he would’ve sworn that every time he turns his back to it he feels eyes raking over him. Things slowly escalate and whenever he mentions it to the locals (if he mentions it) they tell him to get the hell out of dodge but Steve’s always been stubborn. Besides it doesn’t really feel malicious just kind of curious in a creepy, hair standing up on the back of your neck, kind of way. It’s not until his abusive/dirtbag ex shows up (and maybe that’s why he left NYC, maybe he’s in witness protection or maybe he just ran away and his ex was just your regular run of the mill douche or maybe he was part of something worse and he’s come after Steve to shut him up, permanently) that Steve finally realizes what’s been going on


End file.
